Back in 2017 when we featured Melbourne’s Vile Apparition on our column Demo:listen, the band was still a two piece, with drummer Ollie Ballantyne and Jamie Colic handling everything themselves. Since then Vile Appartion has doubled in size. Dan Harris now shares guitar duties with Colic, and Dave Kearns joined on bass, giving Colic the opportunity to shred and growl exclusively. And he never squanders an opportunity to do either at any point on Depravity Ordained, Vile Apparition’s 9 track debut full length.

Depravity Ordained rolls with an unstoppable subterranean groove. Even when Ballantyne is blasting there bangs a steady, old school homicidal pulse. Heads that bang to o.g. brutal NYDM heavyweights like Suffocation and Internal Bleeding should lose their minds over Vile Apparition’s stoned and muscular approach to death metal. Likewise those who worship Trey Azagthoth’s nuclear solo bombs should also tune their skulls immediately to Depravity Ordained’s flagrant use of lethal riffs. In brief: here comes yet another phenomenal and utterly indispensable death metal album. Except this one’s tougher.

From Depravity Ordained, out January 21st on CD from Memento Mori and on vinyl and cassette from Blood Harvest, this is . . .

Malevolent Aphantasia

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Depravity Ordained