Holy Fuck, This Hooded Menace Track!

Just this past Friday I was fellating Emperor Rhombus in person for what a great job he’s been doing writing for MetalSucks these past few months. And now I will do so again in written form, because he found just the perfect way to sum up their new album Darkness Drips Forth when he wrote up the new track called “Elysium of Death” last month:

God, Hooded Menace just sound like ooze. Not just blood or death or gore, but fucking slime, the kind of stuff you find coating a horrible monster as it comes lumbering into the light and peels back its pustule-covered lips. They sound like the shit that comes out of Venom’s mouth. They sound like the Tarman.

Case in point, “Elysium of Dripping Death”, the first song off of the band’s upcoming new album. A creepy pool of riffy death-doom, the song just drips with decay and goo and pus. It has everything you want out of a Hooded Menace track, including earworm riffs and gurgling gangrene vocals.

Decibel has another taste of said ooze in the form of “Blood for the Burning Oath/Dungeons of the Disembodied,” an 11-minute track that kicks off the album. And what a way to begin: Hooded Menace spend FIVE whole minutes setting things up with a down-tempo sludgefest, then ratchet things up (relatively) into the deathier meat of the song before bringing it full circle a good eight-and-a-half minutes in. Long songs can have a way of feeling, well, too LONG, but Hooded Menace have mastered the art.

Absolutely loving this, and I share Rhombus’s assertion that this album will be a fun one with which to ring in Halloween when it drops October 30th via Relapse. Pre-order it here.