Grave Hex have released Sewer Embalmment, the first song from Domain of Foul Rebirths, a five track EP due on 30 October. The band call it a concentrated version of everything on the record.
The concept is the kind that either carries an EP or collapses it. Each song takes a different route to transformation and each route is grotesque: self disembowelment, ritual surgery, being eaten alive. Death metal has written about all three separately for decades; arranging them as five variations on rebirth is a tighter idea than most bands manage two years into their existence.
Musically they have moved rather than hardened. The band say they wanted the gnarlier mid tempo side of death metal, with more hooks and groove than their earlier material, which is an unusual direction for a Helsinki band whose first album leaned on speed and filth.
That album, Vermian Death, came out last year, so the EP arrives at the point where a new band either repeats itself or finds out what it is. This one reads as the second.