Band:	Musmahhu
Album:	Reign Of The Odious
Style:	Death metal
Release date:	January 18, 2019
A review by:	RaduP

01. Apocalyptic Brigade Of Forbidden
02. Musmahhu, Rise
03. Slaughter Of The Seraphim
04. Burning Winds Of Purgatory (Mellanspel)
05. Reign Of The Odious
06. Spectral Congregation Of Anguish
07. Thirsting For Life's Terminus

2018 was a damn good year for death metal and it's just January of 2019 and we're already seeing that the trend continues into 2019.

Granted, Musmahhu isn't exactly death metal, as the blackened part of their sound often pulls them closer to black metal than death metal at times, but the point still stands. Plus it's released by Iron Bonehead Productions, so it's definitely a continuation of the great death metal trend. Musmahhu is another one of Swartadauþuz's projects (we don't have a lot of those on Metal Storm yet but a quick glimpse on Metal Archives and you'll see there's A LOT of those), but if they're half as good as this, they're worth exploring.

Swartadauþuz isn't the only member here, though he does the instrumental part. Vocals were done by one Likpredikaren, who has collaborated with Swartadauþuz previously on a few of his projects. Also I find it hard to believe that Likpredikaren is not Nergal, given that their vocals sound almost identical, which was one of my issues with the albums. Hearing it I almost always get the feeling that I'm listening to Behemoth even though Behemoth haven't made an album this putrid in about 15 years, so it often feels like the return to form for another band... which is I guess better than feeling like an album of outtakes from another band.

Besides the vocals, the instrumentals are incredibly well-performed and well-written, which is somewhat surprising given the one-man nature of it. There's cues of old-school Swedish death metal and old-school Swedish black metal and, updating to this century, Musmahhu also puts an emphasis on creating a quite claustrophobic and suffocating atmosphere through the production, and the immensely powerful riffs certainly add to that. Very little in terms of repetition, the songs are always moving and always evolving though there's less of a feel of where they're trying to go and not that much in terms of diversity. But what it does in those 40 minutes of run time it does extremely well.

Though not the most original of works, both musically and in having an extreme metal band named after a Mesopotamian mythological being, Reign Of The Odious really shines in most other departments. It's extremely tight and it sounds great. I just wish it sounded a bit less like Behemoth.

Let the reign start.