Shortly after exiting Vastum in 2023, Shelby Lermo (Nails, Ulthar) moved cross country to Northern Virginia and enlisted the talents of guitarist Tommy Wall (Undeath) to partner in writing music for a new project, the goal being to ‘create something even uglier, weirder, and more aggressive’ than Vastum. To that end, Lermo also recruited Genocide Pact bassist Nolan and Brain Tourniquet drummer Aidan Tydings-Lynch to round out the lineup for his new-kids-on-the-death-metal-block band Blood Monolith and its Profound Lore Records debut, The Calling of Fire. Birthed of such heady death metal ancestry as they are, I didn’t figure talent would be an issue. Still, I was curious about how Blood Monolith planned to separate itself from the great works of its members’ main gigs and to stand out in a genre full of dense competition. Complete with very cool cover art courtesy of Rudimentary Peni‘s1 Nick Blinko, we’ll see if The Calling of Fire‘s death metal is a towering inferno or a fizzling flame.
Speedy and straightforward, The Calling of Fire relies more on velocitous brute force than dissonant atmospherics to make its point, which is one more weighty than weird. “Trepanation Worm” kicks the door down right from the start with a battery of blast beats, an arsenal of rapid-fire riffs and trilly runs, and Lermo’s menacing death roars holding sway over it all. What that opener brings to bear is precisely what you can expect from the rest of Blood Monolith‘s debut. Comparatively speaking, there are vigorous nods to the past ala Cannibal Corpse (“The Owl In Daylight,” “Slaughter Garden”) alongside odes that recognize a newer generation and give me Hyperdontial vibes (“Pyroklesis”). Laid against the success of this assembly’s day jobs, Lermo’s quest to unite his death metal Avengers and outdo Vastum may have found the man going too hard, as once The Calling of Fire settles into what it does, there’s little else on the plate.
If one were to look up the definition of onslaught in some comparative death metal dictionary, a picture of Blood Monolith‘s The Calling of Fire may very well be pictured. In just under twenty-eight minutes, Blood Monolith invades your house, bashes your brains in with a cudgel, eats the desserts from the fridge, then kicks the dog and retreats before the cops can show up. Nearly void of desert oases, thirst-weary listeners can take respite in the occasional obscure film sound-bite and the two-punch combo “Apparatus” and “Cleansing.” The former’s intro—twenty-two seconds long—teems with a get-to-sleep-fast-app ambiance, while the latter’s outro—all forty-two seconds of it—repeats that synth-driven sleep-fast theme with low-volume guitar squeals and some static thrown in for diversity. Outside of these short-lived moments are riffs upon riffs upon solos upon blast beats upon guttural growls such that the whole begins to melt into a homogenous haze.
Blood Monolith‘s spotlight shines brightest on Tidings-Lynch’s excellent drumming and Lermo’s ghastly growls, who also spits a bevy of phlegmy hawks-sans-the-tuahs across The Calling of Fire for fun. While this might sound like a strength, it’s a flaw, and The Calling of Fire‘s loud mix is to blame. It is problematic because compression sucks a lot of the life from Lermo’s and Wall’s—what I believe to be intricate and technical—guitar work and renders nearly all of Nathan’s low-end contributions unnoticeable. There are moments of guitar goodness, whether it be the Kerry King-like soloing in ” Prayer to Crom” or the brief mid-paced passages of “Viscera Vobiscum,” that I swear, grab a cadence and some guitar lines from Bloodbath‘s “Soul Evisceration.” But even these moments aren’t enough to pull the overall effect out of the muck.
Lermo’s attempt to be uglier, weirder, and more aggressive than Vastum succeeds on aggression but little else. At first blush, The Calling of Fire feels like an in-your-face, full-on, balls-out death metal crusher; however, pushing play the fourth, fifth, and sixth time found me blurring everything together. There’s promise here, don’t get me wrong, and while I may be chastised for underrating Blood Monolith‘s debut, I stand behind my score. While it’s not entirely unworthy of your time, it’s also not landing on your year-end list, and certainly not mine. We’ll have to wait and see how hot the fire of Blood Monolith‘s next adventure burns.
Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320kbps mp3
Label: Profound Lore Records
Website: Bandcamp
Releases Worldwide: May 16th, 2025
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