01. Burning Choir02. Comet of End Times03. Swarming Angels & Flies04. The Deep Ends05. Where the Void Begins06. The Undercurrent07. Closure08. Unto SepulchresWith a name that takes the front of SARCOFAGO and attaches it to the back of KREATOR, SARCATOR were never shy about proclaiming their debt to the blackened thrashers of the past. They made their ugly intentions more than apparent on their self-titled debut back in 2020. A seething, hateful eruption of old-school viciousness performed with pulverizing, new-school aggression, it declared this young Swedish quartet to be brimming with infernal potential. Two years later, SARCATOR dropped “Alkahest”: the grandiose and proudly progressive flipside to that scalding debut. It was full of invention and broadened the band’s scope to such an extent that it became impossible to predict where they would apply their lethal blade next. The logical choice would be to combine the neck-wrenching savagery of “Sarcator” with the adventurous swagger of “Alkahest”, thus creating the ultimate amalgam of ancient and modern. And that’s exactly what they have done. Result.Even at its most unpredictable, “Alkahest” was still a ferocious, pitch-black thrash album, and “Swarming Angels & Flies” nobly continues that tradition, drawing from the debut’s wide-eyed explosiveness to make everything faster, fierier and more viscerally intense. “Burning Choir” is an utterly furious starting point: more deeply entrenched in early death metal than any previous SARCATOR tune, it marries the primitive screech of the old school with a shrewd, shape-shifting arrangement that drips with Big Four-like dexterity. Frontman Mateo Tervonen has a voice ripped straight from the mid-’80s, with all the untutored grit and psychotic abandon that proved so important in the development of extreme vocals. He roars and spits his way through the pendulous, punishing macabre of “Comet of End Times”, borne aloft on rapid-fire waves of brutal thrash, and giddy on fumes from the depths of Hell.SARCATOR power forth with their own loose-limbed but devastating momentum, classic metal melodies twisting themselves to keep up with the hostility. The title track is simply magnificent. A carnivorous blast of impossibly nimble death / thrash militancy, it turns abject violence into a thing of bewildering beauty: four musicians, locked in and hell-bent on hammering the point home, with the added bonus of deliriously blasphemous lyrical content and a lead break from Tervonen that should bring a tear to the eye of ageing metalheads everywhere.Strident and mid-paced, “The Deep Ends” is a choking dose of real deal, traditional metal, with a blackened heart and an understandable crush on the first four KING DIAMOND albums. Even more unexpected is “Where the Void Begins”, a melodramatic, prog-tinged sprawl, with existential angst etched into every morbid riff. “We are lost in the treacherous dark!” is a punchline to savor, and SARCATOR’s transformation into a more sophisticated beast is noted with relish. This is crushing, razor-edged metal at its best, but with cliches subverted and well-worn tropes revived and repurposed.Even at its most extreme, “Swarming Angels & Flies” has revelations to spare. “The Undercurrent” begins as a perma-blasting black metal face-flayer, with drummer Jesper Rosén working overtime, but veers off into barbaric folk metal territory for a brief but sublime, time-travelling detour. Similarly, the way “Closure” starts as a sparse, haunting post-punk mirage is ingenious, and the song’s subsequent, seamless evolution into a near-psychedelic collage of driving post-rock and VOIVOD-esque avant-thrash is both a brave and a smart move that comes off without a hitch. Normal, nasty service resumes on the closing “Unto Sepulchres”, which makes no bones about its SLAYER fixation, nor SARCATOR’s ability to squeeze dissonance and blackened vulgarity into the most straightforward, rivethead-friendly riffing. Swarming Angels & Flies” is a feverish and exuberant black-thrash tour-de-force, with loads of ambition and fantastic songs. In the midst of a shitty January, what more could a weary soul ask for?[embedded content]