FROZEN SOUL's brand of straightforward, in-your-face death metal is a gasp of fresh air in a genre that's

stretched the very limits of technicality. Fully formed in 2018, the quintet has rapidly made a name for

itself and churned the underground with a sound that evokes the old school sound of bands like

Obituary, Mortician, and Bolt Thrower. That reverence for death metal's roots was apparent from

Frozen Soul's initial four-song Encased in Ice demo, which includes a cover of Mortician's "Witch's

Coven" and was released in early 2019 on California's Maggot Stomp Records.

FROZEN SOUL entered the studio in early March 2020 to record its first full-length with former guitarist

Daniel Schmuck handling production and mixing duties. Crypt of Ice is nothing short of a breath of very

fresh and very cold air on death metal's fiery landscape. From re-recorded demo tracks including the

call-to-arms of "Encased in Ice" and the savage frost blister of "Wraith of Death" to the brutal,

pummeling, and momentous guitar churn of "Arctic Stranglehold," FROZEN SOUL have delivered a

record that embraces the genre's past while pushing death metal forward with frigid force.

“Filthy. Putrid. Vile. Disgusting. Shat from the slime-ridden bowels of hell. You can see where I’m going with this.” That’s how Sleeping Village described SANGUISUGABOGG, the upstart gore merchants whose reverence for old-school death metal is matched only by their unapologetic celebration of splatter. SANGUISUGABOGG paint musical crime scenes with blood and all other manners of bodily fluids, spewing carnage with a glee to rival cult classic b-movies like Dead Alive.

Tortured Whole, the full-length debut from the Ohio foursome who describe themselves as “down-tuned drug death,” is a demonstration of sludgy traditional death metal of the highest order, with a slaughterhouse’s worth of body parts and punishment oozing from any speakers brave enough to broadcast it. To say that the joyful humor with which it’s all delivered is “tongue in cheek” would be to do it a disserve; SANGUISUGABOGG is more of a severed tongue used to

defile fresh victims.

Sanguisugabogg:

In fact, the group of death metal upstarts from the Midwest has already aligned with Troma, the beloved renegade indie filmmakers responsible for The Toxic Avenger and Class of Nuke ‘Em High.

A joyous and inclusive live act combining demented lowbrow wit with determined rifftastic extreme metal perfection, SANGUISUGABOGG road treks include dates with Creeping Death.

BrooklynVegan put them on a Most Anticipated Albums list next to genre titans like Carcass.

Extreme music of all stripes, from punk to black metal (plus a heavy dose of psychedelics), led

to the creation of this dream death metal outfit. It’s a group that mines the OSDM of Morbid

Angel and Bolt Thrower, with fiendishly over-the-top worship of exploitation. Tortured Whole is

a delightfully disruptive beginning for the band Metal Observer recommends “for fans of

sewage.”