Spearhead – Decrowning the Irenach

‘Decrowning the Irenach’ is Spearhead’s second full-length release, and comes shrouded in the glory of having been engineered by Polish master Wojciech Wieslawski, who has also worked with Vader, Decapitated, and one of my personal favourites, Azarath. Indeed, this album sees a marked step up from previous outing, 2005’s ‘Deathless Steel Command’. The production, while neither huge nor polished, powerfully showcases the music, while the band’s ideas have evolved quickly, pushing their sound in a brutal, classic Death Metal direction.

Billing this album as something that would appeal to fans of old-school acts like Morbid Angel and Carcass was a wise move on the part of the band and distro, because there are plenty of features on ‘Decrowning the Irenach’ that do hark back to glory days, most notably the highly athletic, squealing solos which punctuate nearly every track, especially the noisy, switch-laden ‘Brotherhood of Arms’. A lot of the riff work is reassuringly classic, for example on the breakneck ‘When Pillars Fall’, as is Spearhead’s ability to structure a song around a number of familiar, brutal movements.

This isn’t just an exercise in retro death metal blasting, however, even if sticksman Vortigern is possibly part bionic, so relentless is his machine gun onslaught. A thrash sensibility combined with a blackened edge present in the production and in Barghest’s vocals, which are harsh but not deep, keep ‘Decrowning’ from descending into a purely linear brutal mass. Sure, a couple of the tracks seem a bit repetitive, with the eastern-sounding discordance of ‘In the Face of the Absolute’ marking a drop-off in my attention, but the band do rally themselves for a triumphant finish with the outstanding ‘Mors Triuphalis’ re-raising the bar with its militiaristic rhythms and tight, straightforward riffs.

If it’s the non-standard part of this death metal that keeps it interesting, then Spearhead are to be especially commended on their lyrical concepts, which centre on the philosophy and inevitability of war, from the Roman Imperial period to the terrors of last century. Overall, an album which flies the standard of enjoyability and brutality high throughout; if there are patchy moments then it’s because the great ideas congregated in the excellent stand-out tracks, but still, this is a cut above.