ANOXIA Gave Me Neck Pain with “Revel In Sin”

“…sounds like it crawled out of a swamp, chugged battery acid, and decided to throw hands…”

Do I even want to know what Lovecraftian nightmare we’re sitting in with that album cover? Or should I “just go with it”?

Anoxia is an Australian old-school death metal band with an attitude problem, which is why they write death metal… to let out their frustrations in normal, sane and bah-bah-ballistic ways (must’ve learned that in therapy). Their latest release Revel In Sin dropped today (April 17th), marking their debut full length following their debut EP Languish in Suffering. According to the press release, this record “sees the band refining and amplifying their sonic brutality, channeling their relentless live energy into eight tracks of pure, malevolent mayhem.” Translation: the goal is not letting you out of this without a few missing teeth… my kind of people. That’s a big talk, though. Does Revel In Sin live up to all the talk? Or was the alien tumbleweed in the album cover declawed?

The album opens with the title track, a spacey instrumental that feels like it belongs in Star Trek... right before the ship crashes into a wall of HM-2 pedals. It’s slow, it’s sludgy, and it sets the tone of “you ever mosh in space?”. Then “Blood on the Altar” comes flying in with all the subtlety of a bar fight. The riffs are blistering, the vocals sound like they were recorded mid-exorcism, and the pace screams, “Jazzercise: for your neck.” From there, it doesn’t let up—“M.N.W.” doesn’t even pretend to be polite, and “Rule by Cold Steel” slows things down just enough to make you nervous before the next hit. At this point, I’m enjoying the record, but I do notice I’m losing track of my place in the album, like some of the songs started to mesh together. It didn’t help that when the track did a slow fade out at the end, I thought I had already finished the album and was confused how it ended so quickly.

But then “In the Wake of Desolation” kicked the goddamn door in to start Side B, making me jump so high I left a me-shaped hole in my ceiling. Well, I wanted a way to break up the monotony, I fucking got it! “Dwell in Death” keeps things rolling with the intensity, and honestly, the title pretty much sums up the vibe of listening to the whole album: dwelling, decaying, and leaving my rotting skeleton with the sign of the horns placed across my chest… what’s left of chest.

“Darker Forms of Knowledge” creeps in with a lo-fi intro until the band kicks in—though if I’m being picky, I wish the impact hit harder. It felt like the fade in was all they really did and had no impact when the whole band joined in. A complete missed opportunity in my opinion. One of the perks of a lo-fi guitar riff fading in as the start of a song is that once the drums do a pummeling fill line to signal for the rest of the band to blast in all at once, the record explodes and sends your ass flying across the room and into the foundations! … we didn’t get that here. Still, once it gets going, I caught myself chair-dancing a little. You ever try swaying your hips in a gaming chair? It’s weird. Death metal shouldn’t groove this hard, and yet here we are.

And let’s talk about the guitar work: Elias Niahos’ riffs are filthy, the solos shred like they’re trying to cut through dimensions, and there’s a surprising amount of flair buried under the grime. The dude can shred, his fingers are part cheese grader and his guitar is cheddar. Once we get to the closing track “Merciless Sin” the album refuses to go quietly. It comes out swinging, throws in some tasty tempo changes, grooves hard in the middle, and slows to a lumbering crawl just to make sure the corpse stays down. Then it fades out like nothing happened. Casual. Clean. Chonky!

Production-wise, this album is tight. Not sure who the mixing engineer was, but the mix walks the line between raw and refined—you can hear every nasty little detail without losing that grimy OSDM texture. Looking back, I’m not sure I gave Joey Scott’s vocals enough credit for being perfectly disgusting. Everyone else did great to in their own ways. Marco Alvarez’s drums are punchy and demolishing. And James Taylor’s bass, while not front-and-center in the mix, is definitely felt (especially on a decent set of headphones).

So what’s the verdict, your honour? How do I put this gently? Anoxia’s Revel In Sin sounds like it crawled out of a swamp, chugged battery acid, and decided to throw fucking hands. If you couldn’t tell already, the quartet are proudly flying the Old School Death Metal flag—no frills, no filters, just the kind of sonic violence that leaves your ears bruised and your soul mildly concerned for the many decisions that led to this assault. At around 34 minutes, Revel In Sin doesn’t overstay its welcome. It blasts in, wrecks the place, and leaves before anyone has time to process the damage. A few tracks do blend together on the first listen, but clever use of fades and tempo changes help break things up—and by the second spin, it all starts to hit harder.

Now, if you’re looking for something new and innovative, this ain’t it. This isn’t going to be the one death metal record that gets your local Taylor Swift fan to jump ship and swim over to the dark side. But in fairness, Anoxia aren’t here to innovate—they’re here to cave your skull in the old-fashioned way. And they do it with flair.

If you like your death metal raw, relentless, and just a little groovy in spite of itself, this one deserves a spot in your rotation.