Artist: Guntmold
Country: Canada
Label: Self-released
Formats: Digital
Year: 2025
It was just how it went in the 80’s. Thrash Metal was becoming the dominant force. Too popular and not heavy enough for some, with it came a boundless search for new extremities. Slowly, it morphed into Death Metal and Black Metal. Fast forward 40ish years, and that evolution seems less common, a part of history. Yet it is exactly how Guntmold, a relatively new three-piece from Newfoundland, Canada, evolved their sound.
The Band’s first music appeared in 2023, in the shape of a Napalm Death Cover and two singles that appeared on the band’s first recording, the 2023 demo ‘7 Inches of Guntmold’. At that time the band mixed old Thrash and Death Metal, but that was not the direction the band was aiming for. While the Thrash and Death Metal links were not completely gone, on its next release ‘Blackened Infection’ the band had traded most of that sound for Scandinavian Black Metal. And that is the path the band has continued on with the release of their debut ‘Sanctuary of Torn Flesh’.
The album feels a bit like a movie where you start watching, and then decide to skip and see how it ends. In the process, you leave out all the things that happen in the middle that give the story character. ‘Sanctuary of Torn Flesh’ feels hampered by the sudden transition from Thrash to Black Metal. It is not bad, but lacks depth. Most of it seems based on a few Black Metal riff ideas in the vein of Darkthrone and Celtic Frost which are okay, but lack fleshing out. Take for instance ‘Retribution of the Flail’, sporting a decent main riff but otherwise feels a bit assembled together from leftover ideas. Some others feel like remnants of the past sound, like for instance ‘Torn Flesh’, which in every way has much more of a Death Metal vibe. The vocals are pretty good, and have a nice commanding tone, but the programmed drums are just lacklustre and bring the whole thing down. The forced pace really doesn’t do the band much good, and it is the slower, more atmospheric closing track ‘Black Dense Fog in the Valley of Mutilated Corpses’ that is by far the most interesting song on the record.
I admire the bravado with which the band announces their arrival in Black Metal, but in reality, the album just feels too soon. For me it’s a prime example that it’s too easy to release something as an album these days. It is miles apart from some of the youthful bands from Norway or Finland, where the Black Metal is so deeply engrained in their DNA that it oozes from their every note. No doubt Guntmold has the right intentions, but for now, it feels completely anonymous.
