Prophetic Suffering - Rivalry of Thyself (2025)

SRUIN247
In under half hour Edmonton-based bestial death metal sadists Prophetic Suffering bring forth a violent and dark monstrosity forged by an abysmal convergence between Blasphemy’s war-torn black metal terror with the gruesome and gore-infested death metal of Cannibal Corpse albums like "The Bleeding" and "Tomb of the Mutilated". “Rivalry of Thyself” sees the Canadian horde metamorph out of their already catastrophic 2022 debut demo ablaze in an exponential spell of destruction in which impenetrable and shellshocking atmospheres enshroud a monolithic, screaming altar of mutilated bodies and trodden flesh. This sanguinary and chaos-wielding approach to American death metal had already been observed before within the underground’s most forbidden folds, as exemplified for example through the perversions of cult devastators like Drawn and Quartered or Angelcorpse. But what transpires from Prophetic Suffering’s new lightless death metal vision is something of even less canonical lineaments and which sets various precedents in the development of this peculiar strain of darkened and ultra-gruesome metal of death. Foremost, a pervasive and weaponized use of modern black metal and technical death-derived dissonance compounding into a torrent of gnarled and atonal fretwork destruction. A mind-expanding contrast is created where the guitar work stretches forward to embrace a mutating modernity still in becoming, while the rest of the band regresses backward into a primeval pandemonium of carpet-bombing hammer blasts, searing basslines, and soul-tearing death grunts. This contrast between the album’s transformative articulation and its visceral adherence to primitivism and barbarity is what makes “Rivalry of Thyself” such an abomination unto itself. A defiant, dark death metal monstrosity that harkens back to a familiar golden age of extreme metal just as it evokes sinister presages of a future form of evolved, lightless death metal still all in becoming.