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MONSTROSITY
Screams From Beneath The Surface

Metal Blade (2026)
Rating: 7.5/10

When it comes to bad album covers, Floridian death metal mob Monstrosity must be held responsible for some of the worst, and that theme continues with latest effort Screams From Beneath The Surface. Artwork, if that’s what you want to call it, like this just leaves me cold, but one does at times have to look beyond the sleeve design. Having said that, the cult status of this band has always baffled me; their 1992 debut album Imperial Doom is still considered a classic by many, but upon issue it was way down the league when it came to important releases within the genre. Since then, the full-length output of the combo has been sporadic; damn, it’s been eight years since the last opus, The Passage Of Existence, and the gap between that record and the previous, Spiritual Apocalypse, was over a decade!

The revolving door of Monstrosity members continues too with band founder and drummer Lee Harrison being reunited with original bassist Mark van Erp, who re-joined in 2022. The current line-up is completed by guitarist Matt Barnes, who has been with Monstrosity since 2010, and former Massacre vocalist Ed Webb, who was recruited in 2021.

Monstrosity’s seventh full-length platter in 36 years comes equipped with ten cuts, but the first of these, ‘Banished To The Skies’, may divide fans. While the band has always liked to inject a few different ideas into their thrashing death framework, the epic Viking streaks don’t sit well with me. A good friend of mine, while listening to the song, commented, “I never thought I’d hear Monstrosity sounding like Amon Amarth”, and his comparison was certainly valid.

Although much of the album does sound like the Monstrosity we all know, there are flashes of dramatic Viking metal to contend with, but after a while you do begin to appreciate the experimentation, even if it’s an acquired taste, for me at least. A few similar epic designs also sneak on to ‘The Atrophied’, but it’s mostly old school style savagery with a foundation of riffs never far removed from vintage Deicide.

The most impressive aspect of the album is the vibrant solos which add dobs of colour amidst the fury. It’s these solos which endorse any melodies even further, a good example being ‘Fortunes Engraved In Blood’ with its progressive strikes. I’ve always preferred Monstrosity as their darkest though, so I was happy when I heard the grinding aesthetics of ‘The Dark Aura’ and the darkly dramatic ‘The Thorns’ with its emphatic traipsing. Again, there’s that vivid flash as a crisp solo snakes from the doomy atmosphere.

The technicality of Monstrosity can never be faulted, and there’s a real sharpness to every clever manoeuvre. ‘Spiral’ is another exhibition of masterful savagery; Webb’s vocals are some of the angriest barks you’ll hear and the drums just pulverise. There’s an undeniable marrying of the 90s death metal vibe and modern execution, and I adore the slower, doomier segments which litter the platter, mainly on ‘The Dark Aura’, although I’m sure that most of the die-hard disciples of the band will prefer the more aggressive aspects, particularly on the furious ‘The Colossal Rage’.

There’s even a few Cannibal Corpse comparisons to me made here; ‘Blood Works’ is an absolute chest crush of a track and there’s a great mix of tempos on the closing ‘Veil Of Disillusion’. It’s strange that a band of this stature and musical prowess has never hit the dizzy heights of the genre, and maybe I should put the less technical Vader and Malevolent Creation in the same pot. Monstrosity records are slabs that I rarely return to but will appreciate forever, and that’s where I sit with this long awaited piece.

Neil Arnold

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