It is often said that death metal is a frozen genre, a prisoner of its codes. Horrendous, a Philadelphia quartet, have spent ten years belying that laziness. Ontological Mysterium, hailed by a near-unanimous press (an 88 average across ten reviews, a density of coverage that testifies to the band’s standing), confirms their place apart: that of craftsmen who refuse to choose between fidelity to their roots and an appetite for elsewhere.
For everything here rests on that balance. The record has the organic, warm texture of early death metal — that of the late 1980s, when the genre was still stammering out its possibilities — but irrigates it with a compositional science and a harmonic suppleness that bring it close to progressive rock. The press hails this double allegiance: Horrendous riff like a death-metal band and breathe like a prog one.
There is, in Ontological Mysterium, a manifest joy of playing, a vitality that contradicts the genre’s supposed darkness. The melodies unfold without ever lapsing into sentimentality, the breaks surprise without ever tipping into empty display. It is a record by erudite metalheads who have not forgotten the primal pleasure of the electric guitar.
Verdict: 8.5. At a time when so many bands mistake brutality for depth, Horrendous remind us that a great death-metal record can also be a matter of intelligence and taste.
