Band: Ichor
Title: Benthic Horizon
Label: Bastardized Records
Distribution: Sure Shot Worx
Release date: October 22nd 2010
Review: CD

Ichor were founded in early 2008 in Trier, Germany, and after a self-produced and self-released EP / mini-album (Kingdom Of The Dead, 2008), the band signed to Bastardized Records. A first album (The Siege, 2009) was supported by lots of energetic live performances in their home country, in support of bands like Despised Icon, Aborted, The Black Dahlia Murder or All Shall Perish, and a small European tour with Benighted (the French one) was done too. Then the members took a little break, at least when it comes to performing live on stage, to write music and lyrics for the second full length. After finishing this material, they entered the famous Polish Hertz Studio (think Hate, Decapitated, Obtest, The Reckoning, Behemoth etc) for the production, engineering, mix and mastering of this new album, which has duration of thirty eight minutes.
Benthic Horizon continues where The Siege ended, which means that this album brings a very technical and energetic form of Death Metal with lots of Blast / Grind assaults, a few drop-backs, ingenious hooks and merciless tempo-changes. In spite of this rather progressive approach, the album does not sound avant-garde – on the contrary, more than once I do recognize the (German) old school. Eric Kuhnen’s, finally, throat fits well to the mathematically specified sonic attacks.
A must for fans of Suffocation, Job For A Cowboy, Whitechapel, Decapitated, Necrophagist, Dying Fetus or War From A Harlots Mouth.

xxx/100

Ivan Tibos.