SLAUGHTER TO PREVAIL. Even if you’ve not heard their music yet (and if you’ve not, do you live under a rock?) then you’ve heard the name. Their debut album, Misery Sermon highlighted them as a band with promise but one that felt fuelled by hype rather than genuinely great songwriting. Come 2021, with deathcore’s revival in full swing, Alex Terrible and co. are back with second album Kostolom in what’s arguably a make-or-break moment for the band. Either they prove they’re nothing but hype and a big YouTube presence, or that they’re far more than that.
Fortunately, it’s almost immediately obvious that they fall squarely in the latter camp. Not only is Alex Terrible a great vocalist with an obnoxiously broad range but the band backing him are far from slouches either. Kostolom’s strongest asset besides his roars, whispers and even sung vocals is arguably Evgeny Novikov’s drumming that underpins and drives every song forwards in a maelstrom of double bass drum carnage, gravity blasts and titanic groove.
The churning riff and Russian count-in to opener ‘Bonebreaker’ heralds the arrival of the skull-caving brutality SLAUGHTER TO PREVAIL deploy over much of the following near fifty minutes. On its face, ‘Bonebreaker’ is designed to do exactly that and the insanity is only getting started. One of the album’s singles, ‘Demolisher’ is up next and it’s one that’s already firmly ingrained in fans’ minds. Its breakdown is one of the most absurd you’ll hear all year and the rest of the track, from the frenetic drumming to the nu-metal inspired opening that seamlessly transitions into breakneck blastbeats.
So far it’s not exactly been deathcore by numbers – the creative songwriting and heavy nu-metal influence has seen to that – but there’s been no true curveballs thrown. That all changes with ‘Baba Yaga’, again a single that many will be familiar with. It leans far more heavily into nu-territory than before and even features cleaner vocals and some rap-esque moments. As catchy as the chorus itself is, the star of the show might actually be the divebombing moments during the breakdown and what follows them; they’re more than a little over the top but lead into an honest to god guitar solo to close out the song that, despite being on a deathcore album, has a strong sense of melody and doesn’t feel out of place at all.
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It’s abundantly clear that SLAUGHTER TO PREVAIL care very little – if at all – for most genre conventions and simply want to write the heaviest, catchiest music they can. ‘Bratva’ opens with a carnival-inspired, totally over the top declaration of “ladies and gentlemen, you’re listening to Alex the Terrible!” before launching into a riff with the heaviest groove they’ve ever written; it stomps and flattens faces with reckless abandon. Elsewhere, ‘Made In Russia’ brings some cringey lyrics – it’s hard to take roars of “don’t tell me what to wear” as much more than edgy posturing – but the tension in the guitar line is palpable and perhaps the heaviest, angriest breakdown on the album.
On the other hand, ‘Zavali Ebalo’ has a crawling, dissonant guitar line that sits under thunderous drums that quickly escalates into all-out war with blastbeats and guttural roars fuelled by some serious aggro. Not content to bludgeon with sheer rage and heaviness, ‘Ouroboros’ feels like tech death fed through their own deathcore lens, shifting tempos and fluctuating riff patterns constantly keeping you on your toes.
Kostolom isn’t just the album SLAUGHTER TO PREVAIL needed to make to prove they’re worth the hype, it’s also one of the strongest, most varied deathcore releases of the year. It’s so ludicrously macho and aggro it’s impossible not to be swept up in its tide of roars, blasts and breakdowns heavy enough to cause earthquakes. Deathcore has undeniably entered a new golden age.