Band:	Cianide
Album:	Unhumanized
Style:	Death doom metal
Release date:	December 27, 2019
A review by:	Troy Killjoy

01. Serpent's Wake
02. Unhumanized
03. Weapon Of Curse
04. Traitors
05. Shadow Of The Claw

The irony about death metal is that, despite its advanced age, it is still very much alive.

Uncompromising in their old school, cavernous, doom-influenced approach, veteran American outfit Cianide, whose existence extends well beyond the average age of our community, come back seemingly out of nowhere with an absolutely crushing mini-album. Unhumanized is fast, ferocious, and brutal in every way you'd expect from a band responsible for releasing some of the genre's highest quality material. Think Bolt Thrower blended with Asphyx in terms of substance and style, but more direct in their delivery.

The relentless buzz of the guitars serve more as a consistent barrage as opposed to structuring formulaic buildups and melodies, hammering the band's unyielding message home with some tidal wave aggression that ebbs and flows alongside the more drawn out sections that crawl through your speakers or headphones and burrow deep inside your ear canal. It's coarse and gritty but never fails to incorporate a healthy dose of groove. It's as if the idea was to have as much fun as possible while desiccating your rotting corpse: something the grizzled growler Mike Perun (bass, vocals) knows all too well.

While music of this nature tends to come across as dime-a-dozen due to its lack of innovation and downright refusal to adapt to or merge with newly explored trends in the scene, Cianide are more than content to bring about some high grade -- if unoriginal -- death metal. They've been at it long enough to know what works and what doesn't, and their contribution to the growth of the underground has finally led them to receive some widespread praise after all these years of silence. Unhumanized is as straightforward as it gets, but thanks to a few decades of practice, the end result is well-executed, no frills extremity blasting craters in your brain one dynamite riff at a time.

Purists and elitists rejoice; Cianide have you covered.