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A brutal assault here from the hateful In Battle, a band that started way back in 1996 as a project comprised of Odhinn and Setherial members. Trading their early Black Metal sound for something more visceral and uncompromising, their fourth album Kingdom Of Fear is a sledgehammer blow of crushing Death Metal in the Hate Eternal and Deicide vein, with more than a few sections owing themselves to the corpse-painted madness of Marduk. Through a pummeling production, In Battle hammer out riffs at a ferocious pace, with blast-beats raining down over gut-wrenching growls and face-melting solos. There's not an awful lot of let up throughout the album's duration, though some riffs are very thrashy and memorable, with slower sections building up to blood-splattered crescendos of unbridled insanity.

Angry, hardnosed and in your face, Kingdom Of Fear is just the kind of aural violence you need to get the blood pumping, and while there is no real originality here, it's still a bitching display of extreme metal technicality.