Portland’s NEGATIVE PRAYER have managed to gain some serious traction in a very short space of time. Although the band only formed little over three years ago, the Oregonian duo grabbed listeners’ attention with their short but utterly ferocious self-titled EP in 2021, featuring three excellent, punchy tracks that married death metal with elements of crust punk, establishing a noxious and visceral sound for the band immediately. Their debut album, Self//Wound, takes these three songs, along with six new ones, and crafts an imposing and powerful record that builds on the many strengths of the EP and further cements the band’s harsh and energetic trademark sound.
Violence kicks things off with a dense, bleak sounding slab of death metal with a punk undercurrent, creating a thick, rhythmic sound that is punctuated with biting, frenetic hooks that lend this an energy that makes it incredibly engrossing, easing the listener into the album with a powerful, punchy opening statement rather than going directly for the jugular. The following two offerings, Hell and Wound, serve as shorter, more bellicose pieces that draw a lot more from crust punk for their intensity, with rabid guitar hooks and sludgy basslines along with the throaty vocals, providing a stringent and chaotic take on the formula present on the opener, not entirely shedding the death metal vocals and groove, but being decidedly less reliant on those elements.
Morbid – a slightly longer effort in the vein of the first track – reverts to a death/punk hybrid, with chunky moments and primitive drumming lending this song much of its aggression. The swampier melodic leads that appear later on make a nice addition, and begin to subtly introduce an epic hard rock influence into the guitar playing that works extremely well. Caged explores these components further, shifting towards a looser, hazier sound tinged with stoner and sludge passages, although the core influences still lie in death metal. It’s an inspired and catchy change of pace with some excellent riffs and domineering moments from the bass, standing apart for all the right reasons.
Noose, a gargantuan slab of music with a cavernous sound, initially begins as a more ponderous affair, but quickly descends into a blistering fast and cacophonous piece of punk-inflected death metal, with the drums and lead guitar especially feeling a lot more imaginative and animated than much of the album’s first half. Angular moments and bellicose vocals make this one of the album’s most visceral and punishing songs, with subtle discordance to match this newfound ferocity. Negative Prayer, another brief but brutal track, takes this fast and furious approach to new heights, with feral guitars, rabid drumming and savage vocals transforming this fleeting offering into another magnificent and adventurous inclusion that leaves an indelible mark on this record.
The next song, an impressive cover of Bloodfeast by MISFITS, captures the elements that made the original so effective, from the rumbling rhythms through to the tight guitars, but does a great job of inserting some of the band’s sound into the mix and making it their own, breathing new life into a hidden gem by one of punk’s most celebrated bands. Amputate, the album’s final song, shifts once more, incorporating cleaner tones and an ethereal approach that undercuts the meatier hooks and adds a sinister, dramatic edge to the music. The bulk of this track consists of huge, mid-paced death metal with tar-thick bass and guitar, bestial vocals and steady drums that are interspersed with the lighter sound that this song began on, coupled with jarring riffs and a caustic punk edge as the song reaches its climax, making for a brilliantly grand yet noxious conclusion to this record.
Although much of this record is very firmly rooted within the marriage of punk and death metal, and possesses the sort of sound that you would expect from an album of this kind, there’s lots of incredibly inspired and intriguing twists thrown into several of these songs that sets NEGATIVE PRAYER apart from other bands with a similar style, with Amputate, Caged and Noose in particular, along with a couple of other, shorter offerings, elevating this album as a whole and making it far more engaging than it would otherwise have been. Like a lot of debut albums, the band’s sound still needs fleshing out and refining some more before it’s fully formed, but Self//Wound lays some exceptionally solid foundations for whatever the band creates next.
Rating: 8/10
Self//Wound is out now via Chaos Records.
Follow NEGATIVE PRAYER on Bandcamp.