Ever since the band’s inception, the warmachine that is Atomwinter rolls on, now, in 2023, arriving at their fourth full-length album, ‘Sakrileg’. And just with every diesel-fuelled heavy piece of artillery, it starts slow but once you get it rolling, it rolls on without mercy and breaches every wall and crushes every skull…
Death Metal merchants Atomwinter have no problem unleashing their war mongering upon you, you peace-loving feeble human. In the right Swedish-Death-Metal-goes-German tradition, we’re getting served with ten tracks (including intro) with Fleshcrawl and Revel In Flesh sort of Death Metal. Heavy on the riffs, great low guttural vocals and a good, driving drum rhythms. No, of course not, it is nothing original. Not only have we heard this from Atomwinter before on their previous recordings, we have been hearing this brand of Death Metal a lot over the past, say, fifteen years. Labels like F.D.A. Records, Cyclone Empire and Transcending Obscurity Records have been bombarding us with countless of bands and albums in this particular style.
It is fair to say that the average release of these labels are… well, average. At best. Yet, Atomwinter is definitely delivering the goods. All based upon a strong and solid foundation of Bolt Thrower and Benediction branded Death Metal, they are adding layer upon layer of massive sounding riffs in the right Dismember fashion. With this they are honouring the classics of old, but with a slightly updated sound they make bands like Paganizer or Entrails go pale. While not as musically as innovative or ingenuous as Nightbearer, but definitely one of the better Death Metal albums to come out of Germany from the last couple of months.
