Review by Sandre the Giant
When Terminal Nation’s debut full length ‘Holocene Extinction’ came out in 2020, the Killchain were very impressed by it, seen in our review here. Their blend of death metal and hardcore was done properly, not just breakdowns, brees and lurid artwork. But the hype has been building for the follow up, 4 years on, and it is finally here. ‘Echoes of the Devil’s Den’ is out now through 20 Buck Spin.
A tolling bell? Gothic organ? The title track opens with all my favourite flourishes into a big knuckle dragging doomy riff, and then bursts into deathly hardcore thunder. There’s a little taste of Swedish death guitar tone crunching through the thick low end (hello start of ‘Bullet for a Stone’), and the deadly chug of ‘Written by the Victor’ is assisted by a guest appearance by Nails’ Todd Jones. As if we needed more brutality. Lyrically, Terminal Nation have taken more inspiration from our collapsing society of selfishness and greed, which has only been exacerbated in the past four years, and you can see the results in the glorious shimmering crush of Empire in Decay’, or the soon-to-be modern classic ‘Merchants of Bloodshed’, that features Jesse Leach on clean vocals. It is a new thing for Terminal Nation, but one that doesn’t feel out of place. This is a band whose execution of its style is so pure and powerful that almost anything they try works brilliantly. ‘Embers of Humanity’ opens with clean, quiet tones that evolve into a spiralling melodic powerhouse, never losing that primal underlying heaviness but remaining evocative, as if you are looking with remorse at the smoking remains of our civilisation.
Wrpaped in a glorious piece of art by Adam Burke of Nightjar Illustration, who captured the apocalyptic feel and almost mythical heaviness of Terminal Nation’s sound perfectly, ‘Echoes of the Devil’s Den’ is THE record for our modern world. It captures the ugliness, the pain and the devastation we are leaving in our wake, but also a touch of the introspection we who are trying to make things better feel. This is a record that I will be spending a lot of time with in the near future.
https://www.facebook.com/terminalnation
https://terminalnationhc.bandcamp.com/album/one-party-system
The Killchain 