Within the context of South American metal, Chilean bands have tended to offer some of the more cavernous and barbaric black/death metal out there, with artists like Wrathprayer and Hades Archer entrancing listeners worldwide with their own brands of darkness. One of the more recent additions to this ever-growing number of bands from the country is Chaos Perversion, who released their debut EP Petrified Against the Emanation via founder Flauros’ label Ritualization Prod. back in 2019. Originally titled Entangled by the Roots of Death, this EP has now been given an expanded international release with new artwork, remixed intro, and new outro track. While the songwriting has an air of familiarity, the strong production values and way the nightmarish riffs seem to twist and turn showcase a promising start for Chaos Perversion.
“Intro: Abyss” draws listeners in with haunting ambiance that only grows in intensity over its minute run-time, having a bit of a mystical quality and almost channeling some dark ambient tendencies. Compared to the original chanting version of this intro on the 2019 release, it’s denser and does a better job of drawing you into the dense and cavernous material to come. Once the actual black/death metal kicks in Chaos Perversion deliver pummeling drums and thick riffs that feel like they are trying to drown you in sewage. Stylistically this duo pulls from death metal the most in terms of how their songs are constructed, with the lumbering, slower passages leading into chaotic and raging blasting that bring to mind bands like Grave Miasma and Dead Congregation to mind, but there’s still some black metal tonality to be found as the material twists and turns. Compared to some of the others out there that go for this dense, cavernous sound, what helps Chaos Perversion is that slight bit of clarity present on the EP. There’s just enough space in the churning layers of sound for the individual riffs to break through, and while the four main tracks do feel a bit too similarly constructed at times there are already some subtle nuances that one can make out. I do think there’s room for the band to further develop these details so the individual songs have moments that truly distinguish them, and the extremely creepy dark ambient and power electronics leaning intro and outro could be expanded upon as well and potentially woven into the black/death metal tracks.
Black and death of this type sometimes bury their vocals far beneath the layers of instrumentation, but this is where the space in the mix allows for Chaos Perversion to let their vocals come tearing through. Daniel Hermosilla does still occasionally get swallowed up by the sheer density of the recording, but his distorted growls reverberate in a genuinely nightmarish way and seem to break through at just the right moments. His approach is a familiar one, but I think it’s the amount of distortion that makes the performance stand out for me, as his already guttural tone gains additional echo and twists into something genuinely inhuman sounding over the course of each song. If Chaos Perversion continues to let Hermosilla hit some downright terrifying pitches, they’ll only continue to get stronger with each release.
At a quick nineteen minutes, Chaos Perversion’s debut offers up some strong production values and the kind of dense, cavernous black/death metal that has some nightmarish, twisted tones and real weight behind it. There is room for the group to develop the nuances of each song more and vary up their attack, and I think if they also lean into the dark ambient angle that they could also differentiate themselves more. Still, it’s a promising start that is another worthy addition to Chilean extreme metal, and with the band indicating more material is on the way potentially later this year they’ll be worth keeping track of. Petrified Against the Emanation is available from Sentient Ruin Laboratories and Total Death over Mexico.
-Review by Chris Dahlberg
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