Totengott - Beyond the Veil (2024)

4★

If you’ve ever wondered what Voivod and Celtic Frost combined would sound like, well, here’s your opportunity to find out. TOTENGOTT’s Beyond the Veil is a dissonant hellstorm of sludgy riffs, dark vocals, and thunderous rhythm work that calls back to the early days of extreme metal. It takes bits and pieces of that mid-80s extreme metal sound and combines it with modern production, giving us a very fat-sounding Hellhammer-esque record. While more firmly in the death metal/death-doom camp than Celtic Frost, it still has all those little Tom G. Warrior “isms” that remind me – almost to a striking degree – of their 1985 album To Mega Therion (undoubtedly an influence on the songwriting for Beyond the Veil, I’m sure). It’s the atmosphere more than anything that sells this album for me. It is an undeniably creepy/macabre-sounding record, and I love that about it. Furthermore, it’s only 44 minutes long, so if you’re like me and can’t stand death-doom that overstays its welcome (cough cough, Winter), this is the one for you.

FAVORITE TRACKS: “Inner Flame,” “Marrow of the Soul,” “Beyond the Veil Part II: Necromancer”

FOR FANS OF: Celtic Frost, Venom, Obituary

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Originally published in Aug. '24 (Issue No. 4)