Album Review: Chestcrush – “Ψυχοβγάλτης” (Black/Death Metal)

Written by Kep

Noob Heavy’s enjoyment of Chestcrush and their monstrous brand of death and death-adjacent violence is well-documented. Ellis and myself have combined to cover every full release that the trio has to offer—2021’s Vdelygmia and 2022’s Apechtheia—and so of course I couldn’t miss the chance to give their newest effort Ψυχοβγάλτης a writeup to match. Saying I expected to like it a lot would be an understatement, and, now that I’ve spent some time with it, saying I love it might not be strong enough. 

It feels like Chestcrush is really hitting their stride now on this second full-length album. Maybe that’s because the members have worked together for longer now, the lineup of multi-instrumentalist and lyricist Evangelos Vasilakos, vocalist Topias Jokipii, and drummer Robin Stone unchanged since Apechtheia in 2022. That EP felt experimental in many ways, as though the band was stretching itself, probing in a more atmospheric direction and casting hideous shadows of oppressive darkness through lengthy tracks and ambient/noise elements. Its predecessor’s primal brutality and chaotic blend of death, black, and grind felt wildly aggressive; Apechtheia felt more carefully crafted, grounded in expansive blackened death, unsettling in its balance of crushing barbarism and cerebral atmosphere. But now Ψυχοβγάλτης has found a particularly satisfying sweet spot, more in line with Vdelygmia in many ways, leaving the ambient and noise mostly behind while honing in on mature and compelling songwriting with nightmarishly heavy textures and grisly vocals. There were two ways Chestcrush could have gone—more experimental or less—and they chose the most immediate and impactful option. 

The record’s eight songs are absolute beasts. The sound is enormous: thick slabs of sawtoothed guitar over remarkably substantial bass and a merciless battering assault in the drums. The mix and master, once again by Ben Jones of crossover thrashers Pest Control, maximizes the sheer size of the texture without compromising the clarity my ears crave. The riffs are huge, bruising things that highlight just how punishing dissonance can be. That glowering dissonance is still very much the point here, building towering walls of oppressive, pummeling waves that feel inescapably big and heavy. It’s like Monstro, that big fucking evil whale from Pinocchio, looming menacingly over you, the size of a damn building, all teeth and hate and bloody bits of gore from previous victims. These riffs are ominous, destructive things that engulf everything in their path. 

Chestcrush has always been able to blow you away with sheer violent rage, but their songwriting has arrived at a point that allows for optimal delivery of that violence. This is complex music despite how brutish it may seem, and it would be easy to overwhelm or tire a listener over the course of 40 unrelenting minutes if the songs weren’t so smartly crafted. They balance full-throated blasting chaos against deliberate hulking lurches, and skidding nails-on-a-chalkboard chromatic slides against deeply satisfying chug stomps that you can feel in your chest. Lead single “Underneath This Rotten Soil Bodies Are Still Bleeding” is the blueprint: it gets tremendous mileage out of simple agonizing half steps, including one specific step up/step down riff, by adjusting their length and the rhythms surrounding them and the intensity of the tones they’re played with. Jokipii’s chesty roars rip chunks of flesh in brutal punishing rhythms while Vasilakos and Stone alternate flaying slashes and bone-crunching blows. 

And it doesn’t stop there, because each of the remaining seven tracks is equally intimidating in scope and hideousness. “We Shall Be Devoured by the Offspring of Our Own Flesh” does a ton of clever tempo shifting to maximize its destructive power. The broad ominous doom of “Existence is Punishment” is like a suffocating weight, its harmonized opening riff a dirge of unavoidable pain and death above unbelievably cavernous bass, eventually rolling mercilessly forward toward more misery and grief, heedless of whether you want it or not. The initial charge of “Hang Them! Torch Them!” will take the breath from your lungs with its utter inhumanity before delivering some of the most primal, headbangable riffs and roars on the album. The seven minutes of final track “As the Damned Writhe in Eternal Woe” slowly grind bones and flesh to a paste in cruel, crushing fashion, dripping of hate and spite in a way reminiscent of the seething hostility of Immolation. No song on the album is shorter than four minutes—quite a contrast from Vdelygmia, where four minutes marked the longest track and most were considerably shorter—and each feels ideal as it is. It’s substantial, impressive work. 

THE BOTTOM LINE

Ψυχοβγάλτης is hateful. It is callous. It is terrifyingly destructive. It’s the best thing we’ve heard from Chestcrush yet and them at by far their most punishing. I hope you all enjoy the misery as much as I have.