Band:	Repugnant
Album:	Epitome Of Darkness
Style:	Death metal, Thrash metal
Release date:	2006

01. Hungry Are The Damned
02. Premature Burial
03. Voices Of The Dead
04. Draped In Cerecloth
05. Spawn Of Pure Malevolenze
06. From Beyond The Grave
07. Sacred Blasphemy
08. Eating From A Coffin
09. Another Vision [Morbid cover]
10. Mutilated Ramains

It is a shame some bands do not stick around for longer and give us more opportunities to hear what they can produce. Sweden's Repugnant only produced one full length record in Epitome Of Darkness, but my God did they make the most of it. One of the most incendiary slabs of death metal to have been produced since the turn of the millennium, you owe it to yourself to give it a listen.

Holy hell is "Hungry Are The Damned" one of the best introductions to a death metal album going, sounding like the ground swallows you up; your descent into the depths of hell through the wailing tortured souls already there is so quick you can't even get your bearings before you hit the ground with a thud. It is with this that you are introduced to Repugnant's sound, high intensity and pummelling death metal punctuated with slower but no less gritty and hard-hitting sections. It is a formula that will overwhelm you, a marriage of grindcore and death metal that makes for one unholy union.

Epitome Of Darkness is an all-out assault on your senses, barraging you relentlessly until you find yourself in thrall to the power that rages through the headphones. When you see cartoons of people being blown away from the sound coming out of a speaker, Repugnant seem to have aimed to have that effect on whoever is brave enough to hit the play button. This album should come with an apology note for your neighbours given how it will surely burst in through their windows and make them unwilling listeners.

Goore's vocals are scathing growls that sound like the man is ripping his throat to shreds for your pleasure; his machine gun vocals fire past you some (admittedly generic) gore influenced lyrics that will permeate your consciousness and draw up gruesome images to be painted in your mind's eye. This is of course if you are capable of coherent thought should Goore, Sathanas, and Burns not be shaking you constantly throughout, with your mind bouncing around like a pinball in your skull in response to their guitar and bass attack.

Goore and Burns throw riff after riff out and ensure each space is as important as the other, with a riff that punctuates the air with a bang. Pick a track and you will find plenty of guitar work to keep you occupied and to push the quality of the song up several notches. "Voices Of The Dead" and "Another Vision" stand out for their guitar work and will be imprinted in your mind once Epitome Of Darkness decides to release you from its clutches.

Sathanas' rumbling bass is not a passenger in all of this; his bass may be a step behind the guitars but it is audible and powerful, giving that extra punch to the guitars that ensures you are giving your full attention at all times. Songs like "Spawn Of Malevolence" are that bit more slamming as a result of the bass.

It is this high intensity nature that ultimately leads to the weak point of this album; this constant focus on all-out power does diminish in impact the longer you listen until it eventually no longer has the same hold on you. Much like a roller coaster, at some point you run out of air in your lungs to scream like a banshee as you're thrown around. The worst part is that the band do hint at it; the introduction to "Sacred Blasphemy" makes you feel that the band are on top of this but it proves to be a false dawn. "Eating From A Coffin" does remedy this in its mid section, dropping the intensity for a mid-tempo passage, but it comes too late in the album, its impact dulled from the repeated blows the album has given you up to this point.

While the band do switch up their tempos, they never drop the power with which they launch themselves around on Epitome Of Darkness; the groove break in "From Beyond The Grave" is a bit too short and they could have sat in that pocket for a while longer, but the band always seem in a rush and that has the tendency to not let the music breathe as a result. While this can sometimes work given the right circumstances, it never seems to click properly for me here; Repugnant sound like they have the tools to perhaps make this work but they never seem to be put it in working order.

If your windows are still in their frames and also not shattered into a thousand pieces, then clearly you weren't listening to Epitome Of Darkness. Taking the adage to leave the audience wanting more, this sole release by Repugnant is a strong and vibrant record that deserves to included in any discussions on the best death metal releases since the turn of the 21st century.