Sickening Horror is the Greek band that spawned the ultimate drummer for Nile; George Kollias. They now finally release their debut album When Landscaped Bled Backwards through our own Dutch Neurotic Records. Lets find out what horror this disc holds.

As probably all Nile fans know, when George joined them their speed went up a bit. For Sickening Horror about the same tempos are used, but there is much more to their sound than just death metal. Add a little black metal, a whole bunch of jazz and some industrial sampling and you get a pretty good idea what Sickening Horror sounds like. Sort of a high speed Atheist one could say.

 

Overall the sound of the band is unmistakably death metal; aggressive fast technical riffing and brutal grunts make for the basis of the music. The jazz and industrial influences make sure the band has a bit of a face of its own, in the already crowded death metal scene. Luckily the jazz doesn’t sound to weird with the rest of the music, it sort of fits in an odd way. For me personally the jazz bass playing lifts the record to a higher level, joined of course by the ultra high speed blastbeats and double bass handling. Brutal shit.

 

And to make things more complete, Sickening Horror grooves quite a bit. It’s not just bashing away constantly, it has room for some headbanging riffs in every song. Add to this a swell production that sounds catchy to the death metal ear and you can say the band did a pretty good job on their debut. When Landscapes Bled Backwards is certainly a good addition to the collection of any fan of technical death metal, and I hope to see them on the road very soon.

PS. it seems that Kollias has already left the band, so good luck finding replacement on that!