“We are Gravehill. We are death fucking metal!” bellows vocalist Mike Abominator at the close of the track “Decibel Ritual” from the rerelease of “Rites of the Pentagram.” After only 2 tracks, any fan of the genre can tell you these guys are for real and Mike’s proclamation is far from a fallacy. Gravehill is on a mission to slaughter the masses with their take on old school death metal. They fit in right along with classic Slayer as well as Death and if you accuse them of copying either, they’ll most likely tear you limb from limb.
Their production is clean, but not so much as to take away from the grisly sound and feel of their music. Songs like the opener “Rites of the Pentagram” are blistering fast and don’t sound muddled. “Pissing On Your Grave” is a back alley creeper that waits in the shadows waiting to disembowel. With a methodically crunching sluggish intro you can anticipate the speed shoe is about to drop but you just can’t figure out how. At 1:30 it hits like a rusty knife through your abdomen, and chugs along at a relentless old-school pace.
The 2-mile freight train of a song on the album is the 6 minute and 14 second “A Celebration of Wounds.” Kicking off with a sludgy bass intro, and launching into a wickedly twisting epic that invokes the strongest Death influences on the album with its unpredictable nature.
After having just headlined the Campaign for Death Metal Purity Tour with Cardiac Arrest, anyone can see that this California quintet lives and breathes the old-school death metal ways and after one listen to “Rites Of The Pentagram” it shows. They ooze old school style and aggression and still keep it fresh and not like a rip-off or cover band.