Stress Angel may not have been around in ‘88 themselves to keep that ancient fire going, but they sure burn bright with it all these years later.
When I interviewed the band around the premiere of their first album, Bursting Church, drummer and vocalist Manny Sores told us that “playing evil metal should always hurt you in some way” and their new song “Ritual Debt,” coming out next month on their sophomore album Punished By Nemesis, certainly makes it clear that pain is the goal. Evil metal indeed: This is a song full of the same archaic devastation that death metal fans worldwide went insane over last time and proves why they will again become.
Despite that enduring focus on raging, thrashing early death metal, Stress Angel also shows on this new song that they’re capable of additional facets. Morbid, discordant riffs slither around sections of more straightforward pummeling, and the epic solo section—laden with gorgeous melodicism throughout—tells its own story that runs parallel to the aggression of the rest of the song.
Dynamics like that make the mean parts hit all the harder, and it’s that sort of insight into songwriting that allows Stress Angel, despite trodding a path that many have gone down before, to stand out even in the incredibly packed modern death metal scene.