Invulnerable to both time and trends, Seattle death metal warriors Drawn And Quartered have sharpened and re-sharpened their dark, foreboding craft since the early 1990's, culminating in the band's third album, Return of the Black Death. Hot on the heels of 2003's well-received Extermination Revelry, this latest record sees DAQ both staying the dark, foreboding course and pushing it to unfathomable depths of dread-inducing evil, imbuing their blast-intensive form with that long-lost sense of the arcane. Return of the Black Death is everything you'd want in a timeless tome of death metal: unremittingly dark, tauntingly heavy, irrevocably evil, scabrously raw yet chemically focused; in every sense of the word, Return of the Black Death is precisely that: blackest death, breeding palpable horrors both nameless and worldly. Then again, death & disease of the highest order takes time to plant its rot, and Drawn And Quartered are no different, having slugged it out in the underground for more than a decade now.

Consisting of Dario Derna (drums), Greg Reeves (bass), K.S. Kuciemba (guitars), and Herb Burke (vocals), DAQ began as a continuation of Plague Bearer (formed by Kuciemba in 1992 -- Burke also appeared on the merciless Bubonic Death demo recorded in 1993.) In 1994, drummer Matt Cason joined the fold, and soon after the band adopted their present moniker. Although lineup shuffles would continue to dog them, Drawn And Quartered played their third show opening for Napalm Death and At the Gates, in 1996, eliciting a great response from a mostly unfamiliar audience. In the spring of 1997, bassist Greg Reeves joined the band just following the release of the band's first, self-titled demo. That demo was well-received by the underground, and Drawn And Quartered soon became a formidable live act, opening for some of metal's brightest luminaries: Morbid Angel, Obituary, Nile, Deicide, Immolation, Incantation, Monstrosity, Nevermore, Impaled, and Cephalic Carnage, among many others. Little more than a year later, the band would begin recording for their debut album, To Kill is Human, which would eventually emerge in 1999 and, though initially self-released, find extensive distribution through The Moribund Cult. Although taking dual cues from the cults Incantation and Immolation, Drawn And Quartered here added their own brand of Pacific Northwestern insanity to the brutal proceedings, a template upon which they'd expand whilst keeping their underground integrity intact.

Drawn And Quartered embarked upon two self-financed u.s. tours, in 1999 and 2001, in support of To Kill Is Human, in addition to several festival appearances, including a crushing performance at November to Dismember 2000 in San Bernardino, CA. However, in 2002, personal and musical differences led Cason to leave the band, and Dario Derna was recruited to fill the vacancy. Only two months later, a five-song promo, Crusaders of Blasphemy, was recorded, which received positive praise in such magazines as Terrorizer. This promo would also be a first glimpse of the band's second album, Extermination Revelry, where Drawn And Quartered really hit their (brutal) stride and found even more acclaim in the process. A broader but no less brutal and evil-ensconced record, this 2003 document displayed the quartet integrating subtle snatches of doom and even black metal into their deathly foundation, and with even more frightening results. Still, presently there's no comparison to album #3, Return of the Black Death, where every element and underpinning of the DAQ aesthetic is amplified tenfold: the speed more blazing, the doom more thundering, the black more evil, the dissonance more twisted, the melody more mesmerizing. And yet, it all sounds like the same band rather than some fence-riding, please-all-demographics Johnny-come-lately "death metal" band trying to opportunistically plum the fruits of others' hard labors - and better ideas. Simply, Drawn And Quartered are the real, evil deal, and EVIL is the sound of Return of the Black Death.

So, when the word "brutal" has been dumbed down to obsolescence and death metal, in kind, has teetered far too close to mainstream co-option, there you will Drawn And Quartered, fighting the good fight for the Return of Darkness and Evil - there, you will find Return of the Black Death.