Origin - Chaosmos
Agonia Records
Brutal Death Metal
8 songs (44:24)
Release year: 2022
Agonia Records
Reviewed by Goat

Their seventh album, like everything that comes from Kansas' Origin, seems destined to be compared unfavourably to the astonishingly heavy Antithesis, yet Chaosmos has much to recommend it to the discerning brutal death enjoyer. Still one of the more relentless acts around, Origin remind you of this immediately with galloping opener Ecophagy which pounds along without mercy until a false finish opens it up into a slower, more considered beating. And although the band vary the intensity of their beatings between horrific and merely callous, the aural violence rarely lets up. Which is, as fans will know, a good thing; the world-destroying theme of Origin's brand of death metal needs a suitably grandiose level of fury, and so moments like the relative melodiousness that open Panoptical are just lichen on the stone beneath. It may look pretty, but if you trip and hit your head against it, it still will do a lot of damage!

And there's plenty of scope for neck damage throughout the album even if you're just listening to it. The pulverising grooves of Decolonizer, for instance, one of the longer songs here at over six minutes, rarely let up and are sure to cause some pit frenzies when played live, while Cogito, Tamen non Sum moves between technical death barrages and a touch of blackened grandeur towards the end. That black metal blastfest comes along again on Cullscape, like a more muscular version of recent Cattle Decapitation complete with throat-tearing screams, and Nostalgia for Oblivion continues the theme with a more atmospheric take on the apocalypse that isn't without its own grooves.

Finally, we are left with eleven minute plus finale (and Origin's longest piece to date) Heat Death, which begins with the heat in some of the heaviest and most devastating material from the band on the album before switching to a more technical beatdown around the four minute mark that builds up into a more epic style before fading to ambience, a lone guitar droning atmospherically with some keyboard backing before strange buzzing alien ambience ends the album. You can find nitpicks here and there with the album - the ubiquitous Colin Marston's mastering job isn't his best, most significantly, giving John Longstreth's drums a distracting artificial edge that detracts from his undeniable technical skills. Overall, however a more than solid outing from Origin, surprisingly dynamic and varied given their reputation, if not quite as good as past glories.

Killing Songs :
Ecophagy, Decolonizer, Cullscape, Heat Death
Goat quoted 80 / 100
Other albums by Origin that we have reviewed:
Origin - Entity reviewed by Goat and quoted 85 / 100
Origin - Antithesis reviewed by Goat and quoted 94 / 100
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