From freshly blood-wet piles of gore to the moldering stench that comes with the dissolution of dead flesh we step into the portal of old, old death. Only the gnawed-at bones remain as a signifier of past atrocities, the jaws snapped off their skulls, their pelvises stomped to jagged dust amidst nests of sun brittled leather scraps, all gathered to fight off the future redundancies of the accursed false. We find no blades or horned helms in the barrens of this defeated skeletal army but scores of divebombing leads and nauseating thrashed-at riffs still fill the air in the world of Osaka, Japan-based death metal duo Parasitario on this excellent, though admittedly still kinda green debut full-length album. ‘Everything Belongs to Death‘ doesn’t shy away from its influences but instead embraces the old dead art of classic death metal built from the thrashing apex of the late 80’s. They’ve gotten damned good at it over the years and this debut album comes at just the right time to capture the inspired rawness of their fandom, the ideal still fresh in mind and the riffs flowing front to back.

Parasitario formed back in 2018 by way of vocalist/guitarist Yuto Kotani who’d been more fixated on a goregrind influenced form of death metal for the first year or so of development, releasing two EPs before beginning to focus on a more distinctly ‘old school’ influenced thrashing death metal sound. The “Death Instinct” single was a first step in this direction, already showing some early Pestilence influence in its riffcraft though his Van Drunen influenced vocals wouldn’t fully develop until the ‘Shattered Times‘ live EP release later in 2019. The first sign the band were getting serious and putting in some work was arguably the ‘Afterlife Truth‘ EP which’d released in late 2019 but got picked up by German old school obsessed label FDA Records mid-2020. This was where it was clear the whole vision was finding its compositional capability, reaching a point of finer nuance in the guitar work and taking into account some crucial lessons learned from live performances.

As far as I know the core duo at that point, which had included bassist Yu Hamada for a few releases, worked with drummers for live shows but all of their recorded material featured programmed drums. Though I was impressed that it’d been hardly noticeable by the time the ‘Reincarnated Humans‘ demo released in 2021, it did seem like the next step was a human drummer since the band had improved to a fairly high standard. Keeping that in mind, ‘Everything Belongs to Death‘ otherwise seizes the moment, capturing the progress of the band as Kotani’s riffing becomes something above-average, album worthy, and beyond the norm when it comes to ‘old school’ influenced death metal today. In fact it points to the higher standards for this type of thing we’d found earlier in the 2010’s, wherein having goddamned riffs had been the number one prerequisite for real death metal fans, the same sort of headspace bands like Skeletal Remains and Rude were born from. Per my own experience this outweighs the mechanical nature of the drums on the release but that’ll be a personal distinction per listener.

Opener “Blizzard of Death” introduces a thicker ‘Last Ones on Earth‘ production value, bass heavy and light on definition beyond the buzz of the rhythm guitars and the basement level bass guitar tone. There is a satisfying rawness to the recording here in the sense that we get pick scrapes from the down-stroked guitar riffs (a la early Transmetal records) alongside a set of ex-thrasher feeling riffs this side of ‘Consuming Impulse‘ thanks to Kotani‘s style which seems to maintain some parity with the ‘Reincarnated Humans‘ tape while including different types of leads, such as the surreal Swedeath floater ~5:08 minutes in. As a first impression this opening moment escapes the cheapness of false ‘old school’ death metal revisionism by way of its riff linkages, the compositional flow reads fairly genuine and thoughtfully strung to start. “Eroding Natures” perpetuates this feeling and, yes, you can safely compare this approach to early Pestilence and various other post-‘Scream Bloody Gore‘ influenced guitarists circa ’88-’91 (Mercyless, Gorguts, etc.) and at that point the longtime fan basically knows exactly what this record will be in its exploration of classic death metal rhythms in exacting, idyllic formation. We’ve still got a bit of Europe to explore in terms of references but the basal level of ‘Everything Belongs to Death‘ is squarely set to that peak period.

Most of Parasitario‘s exploration on this record occurs as the guitarist pushes for variety in the lead guitar style, digging up the best bodies within his more shredding and cacophonic work which I’d felt best showcased on “Devouring Parasites”. Though we are in the midst of the album’s sequence being on a roll, finding variations on their mid-to-fast paced thrashing buzz while chopping the momentum built into bigger junctive moments, the wailing divebombs and Finnish death metal influenced runs help to create a dissolving, radiated event of this particular song. This is the main thing I’d like to hear more of from these guys, the leads and the bomb-dropping wails do well to characterize the experience as ancient and surreal in the best way. Otherwise the general shape of the album doesn’t drastically disturb the first impression made as we reach the second half and find the band playing with pace here and there ’til very normal, somewhat plain pieces like “Five to Die” round out the full listen. Again the experience is salvaged from the average bin by way of its leads where even the most basic, frankly somewhat derivative piece (i.e. “Hopeless Life”) gains considerable value from the array of lead guitars which quickly develop into a signature for Parasitario‘s guitarist.

This’ll have to be the sort of death metal album that’d won me over for the illogical reason of it being entirely enjoyable as a full listen. A ~38 minute ‘old school’ influenced death metal album that pulls of a specific sound I love beyond basic nostalgia, I not only “get” what these folks are all about in channeling their best vision of classic death metal but it happens to be my favorite sort of thing. Though I’d felt they could’ve dialed back the digital spiking of the distortion a bit and given a bit more definition to the bass guitar tone for my own taste the authentic riff-obsessed nature of Parasitario cannot help but win me over when the riffcraft is either this referential or simply well-crafted. I could definitely pick at the record and find a few small negatives to dig up the damage is yet done and the impression left is that this is a solid experience worthy of continuation. A high recommendation specifically reserved for the ‘old school’ death metal fanatic.

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