Death Above Life wastes no time pretending to be subtle, opening by kicking you with a violent, lurching groove and the full force of Niklas Karlsson’s controlled roar. The production is built to sound arena-sized with every chug exaggerated for maximum impact. The opener Inferna sprawls close to seven minutes, layering orchestral strings and establishing the album’s thesis of total drama, zero restraint straight away.

Bloodhound is driven by inhuman double-kick drumming and a vocal delivery that instantly calls to mind Corey Taylor at his most feral, Slipknot on stimulants with tumbling drum rolls and a deliberately overwhelming intensity. Inside the Waves leans into Lamb of God-style groove metal, built around muscular head-nodding chugs, whilst The Tales of War channels Arch Enemy’s villainous precision. Hydra is pure drama with riffs that swell like a monster with no attempt to sound raw or stripped-back. Orbit Culture lean fully into cinematic excess with synth strings, layered atmospherics and a massive low-end that gives the whole album a blockbuster metal feel, full of aggression. The Storm gallops with a deranged, modernised Iron Maiden energy while Neural Collapse pushes into Machine Head-scale grandeur with extended breakdowns engineered for the kind of festival chaos where shirts go flying and circle pits open up. The double-kick speed is absurd. The closer, The Path I Walk is the album’s lone concession to something resembling vulnerability, with a cheesy and full-blooded metal ballad that rounds off the record, committed to scale and feeling. Death Above Life is exhilarating, grotesque fun, with every element dialled to eleven, and every groove hitting like a fist. If you like metal that feels like being punched repeatedly, this absolutely delivers.