Headhunter DC

Brazilian death metal merchants Headhunter D.C. don’t possess the name recognition of countrymen Sepultura, Sarcofago and Krisiun, but the group’s latest album “Gods Spreading Cancer” is a meritorious release that harkens back to the late 80s and early nineties when death metal was trying to make its transition out of thrash. This blasphemous piece of South American metal has the same bullet-belt, transitional qualities of early Sepultura, Sodom and Morbid Angel and Possessed.

Past recordings showed the band paying homage to extreme metal icons in the form of Sepultura, Morbid Angel and Sodom covers. This time around, Headhunter covers “Slaughtered Remains” from another forgotten, groundbreaking death metal act, Necrovore. This track is typical of the early death metal sound, coming across as mixture of the heavy-on-the-speed-metal-licks style played by Death and Celtic Frost. Monstrous growls and nasal screams provide a good vocal contrast, in turn leading to a feeling of wicked, evilness.

This vocal style persists throughout the album, which works well for the blasphemous words spoken emitted from the tongue of Sergio “Baloff” Borges. Undulating notes that reach a high pitch crescendo combined with the shrieking style of Borges instills much of the album with a hint of black metal. The keyboard-created chorus on the album’s intro “Dysangelium” also travels dark paths similar to black metal or the instrumentals created by Morbid Angel—a band quite that has definitely made its mark on black metal.

The echoing grunts, spacey guitar solos and rolling rhythms undoubtedly pay homage to Morbid Angel on the album’s first, proper track “Stillborn Messiah.” The following track, “Celebrate the Chaos” moves in a fluid, stop-and-go manner that comes across brutal but not chopping like some of death metal’s poor imitators. “Contemplation (to the Fire)” moves with a cranium-stomping rhythm, and “Black Miracle” follows a similar course of action, though with a slightly faster tempo. The group’s transitions from these sludgy moments into blasting drum beats and wailing guitar solos keeps each track from becoming boring.

Headhunter D.C. first laid down the death metal goods 1987—a time when death metal still sought to rub away the velvet from its newly formed devil horns. At such a time, the description “old school death metal” was not even an idea. Critics of this said style could not even conceive such a sordid form of music lastly twenty-plus years, but here we are twenty years later and Headhunter lives on in the shadows, but still gets out its message of blasphemy in the form of “Gods Spreading Cancer,” which proves they must be doing something right.