Artist: Strychnos
Country: Denmark
Label: Dark Descent Records
Formats: 7″ EP
Year: 2025
Strychnos has always been a band that intrigued me. Admittedly, I wasn’t an instant fan. But over the years I have for sure started to really appreciate what these Danes are doing. Mostly because they haven’t done anything the normal way. First of all you can definitely say that Strychnos is a slow starter. Their roots go as deep as 1998 but their debut album only appeared in 2022. In the almost quarter of a century before they released a handful of short players and apparently the band has also been on some sort of hiatus as well, but still… They are clearly persistent, as these guys have released two more than excellent records in 2022 and 2024 and returned with two 7” EP’s released simultaneously earlier this year.
I don’t believe there is an exact order in which these two EP’s should be listened to, but this one is listed first on most digital sources, so let’s start with this one. ‘Sig Nærmer Døden’ is predominantly a continuation of the two previously released albums. Which means that the band is continuing to move away from the standard Death Metal blueprint. Not that they’ve been much of a “classic” Death Metal of sorts, but as time went by Strychnos shows they are not quite a Death Metal band anymore (at all). The two tracks on this 7” EP are far more melodic and have a bit of a mellow Black Metal connotation to it that boils down to a very doomy listen. With rather creative and downright impressive song crafting, Strychnos is now very much a band that is hard to pinpoint to any genre. And, obviously that is what makes them a unique phenomenon in Extreme Metal.
However, probably the most interesting of this EP is actually the B-side which contains a re-recording of ‘God Of Demise’ that originally appeared on the ‘Terror Lies Within’ 7” EP, one of the earliest Horror Records releases from 2000. I am usually not a big fan of re-recordings and especially not when bands have drastically changed their formula and feel the need to re-do their old material. Yet, in this case I think it is quite interesting, the original ‘God Of Demise’ is a rather rough recording that shows the band in a way more standard Death Metal setting. But still, even with those early goings you can indeed hear that Strychnos is no band to follow the trodden paths. The melodic lead and the excellent guitar work already shows there was more to these guys than your average Death Metal band. Especially at that time, where melodic Death Metal was mainly limited to bands like Dark Tranquillity and In Flames, the then rising stars. This updated 2025-version is definitely worth checking out, while the song has almost been fully revised and it might not be that recognizable at first, it still holds the same powerful structure of the original.
