It’s easy to grow accustomed to the new and hyphenated. With most innovation coming in the form of genre splicing and adding new adjectives to pre-existing sounds, sometimes the best thing you can hear is a rejuvenated old form. For the Bay Area death metal horde Barbarous, their style simplicity falls wonderfully in line with what makes their debut a stunner: keep it simple, stupid (K.I.S.S.). Unlike the mediocre first shock-rock band with that name, there are no pretentious, costumes, or weird metaphors for sex here. Instead, Initium Mors delivers some of the best classic death metal in decades. Taking influence from Cannibal Corpse, Carcass, Dismember, and Suffocation, Barbarous are about as efficient and effective as the style gets, not afraid to delve into melody or mayhem when the mood suits; however, it’s clear this is coming from veterans who aim to tackle the spirit of their favorite records into something very much their own. Drummer Travis Zupo concurs:
“Although this band is new, we are seasoned veterans in the scene. We’ve had varying levels of success in other bands and were able to home in and take what we know, and what we wanted to accomplish and execute that vision rather quickly. What really unites us as a band is just wanting to play this type of death metal. We’ve all expressed how this music is what we’ve been craving to do for a while now. The first death metal album I came to love was Evisceration Plague by Cannibal Corpse. As a band though, there’s so many albums we all pull from as an influence. What we wanted to do with this record, being our debut LP was to come out of the gate swinging hard and make this record memorable. What had surprised us was the production quality of the record and how our vision was executed by our producer and engineer Cody Fuentes of Rapture Recordings. Cody has a talent of being able to hear what we’re tracking and make it into a masterpiece.”
Initium Mors is out on Friday, and you can preorder it from Creator-Destructor Records. Follow Barbarous on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok for future updates.
Photo Credit: Jun Aoki
