Albums That Will #$@&%! Your Face Off in 2018: Genocide Pact, Order of Torment*

January 22nd, 2018 at 3:04pm
Axl Rosenberg

It’s a new year, and you know what that means — it’s time for MetalSucks’ eighth annual new year preview, Albums That Will #$@&%*! Your Face Off! As with previous years, we won’t be spotlighting all the great releases coming out this year, but, rather, concentrating on lesser-known bands whose new releases might otherwise escape your attention. Look for these posts by assorted MetalSucks staffers throughout the week. We hope you enjoy ‘em!

Genocide Pact
Order of Torment (Relapse Records)
February 2

It is wholly appropriate that Washington, D.C.’s Genocide Pact are now labelmates with Gatecreeper. Like that band, Genocide Pact make old school death metal with such conviction, you’ll be shocked to learn you’re not listening to something recorded by Scott Burns in the early ’90s.

On their Relapse debut, Order of Torment, the trio offers up forty minutes of bleak, uncompromising aural destruction. On each and every song, the band proves time and again that they have no shortage of ways to crush you. Some bands write galloping riffs; Genocide Pact write rabid, steroidal elephant stampedes. When their music is fast, as on “Structural Dissolution” and “Spawn of Suffering,” they can make you feel like you’re losing your mind; when they slow down, as on “Pain Reprisal” the downright doomy “Authoritarian Impulse,” they are fucking horrifying. It’s hard to imagine a tastier musical representation of what it must feel like to be slowly crushed to death by steamroller.

If I had to sum up Genocide Pact briefly and without the use of language, I would just show this NSFW clip from Brawl in Cell Block 99:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEo_mwZKO4Y

You get it. If you want your face fucked right the fuck off, you can do no better than Genocide Pact’s Order of Torment. Pre-order that bad boy here.