Hailing from Australia and featuring former Portal drummer InVotan, Denouncement Pyre have been squirreling away in the underground for years, World Cremation being their debut full-length. A two-piece, it doesn’t take many listens to this to know that both of the band members have long experience with other groups. Highly competent blackened death with a touch of grindcore sums it up well, influences clearly as wide as their bullet belts but Satyricon obvious from the likes of The Flesh Of Thy Master. Very Satanic in style, the band are as interested in making music that pleases human ears as it does the horny orifices of their master; this is very entertaining stuff mostly along the lines of the Belphegors and Angelcorpses of the world. Diverse, consistent and shifting, as an album this is quite the mission statement, and a real reminder that Australia possesses a wealth of talent that rarely leaves their shores.

Even should some big label snap them up off the back of this, Denouncement Pyre deserve to be more than a face in a crowd, however good that crowd may be. The aforementioned grind influence is a real gem at the heart of the band’s sound, giving tracks like Purification a genuine danger and wildness that they would lack otherwise. Tolling bells in Coven Of Diabolical Prophecies are backed by big thick riffs, two very different forms of darkness working together in a wonderfully atmospheric way. Elsewhere, a brief snippet of choral monks is replaced by grinding guitars and blastbeats as one track slides into another, shrieking solos fly past in a barrage of aural razors before ominous ambience and old-school Death riffage replace them... it’s a complex, heady mixture, but the band handle it all well and ensure that the songs formed are killers.

Favourites are hard to pick out, but you’re pretty much guaranteed to find plenty of meat on these bones. Fine, nothing here is exactly original – you’ll have heard at least some of the riffs before, however experienced you are, and I hope that next time, that’s where the band start carving improvements into their style. But as things currently stand, this is a compelling morass of styles and sounds, competently played and expertly delivered, aimed at the discerning headbanger who is as at ease with black metal as they are with old-school death and grind. Hard to fault, easy to love, Denouncement Pyre deserve your ears and horns.