REVIEW: Malthusian - The Summoning Bell

From dirt to the last sigh

54:02 // August 8th, 2025 // Relapse Records

Within the deepest currents of extreme metal reside bands that do not bother themselves with theatrics or catchy choruses – the focal point of the musical medium is not recognition or success in the traditional sense, but the doctrinal commitment to the unrelenting pull towards the final dusk. Formed amid the dissolution of Altar of Plagues and wielding the psychic gravitas of entities like Antediluvian, Temple Nightside and Abyssal, Irish quartet Malthusian carved out a uniquely oppressive niche with the 2013 demo MMXIII and the Below the Hengiform EP in 2015, before unlocking even denser atmospherics with their soul-strangling debut Across Deaths in 2018. A few years and one pandemic later, the band’s second full-length album The Summoning Bell breaks the long silence as both a continuation and an intensification of their suffocating vision.

A line-up change (arrival of ex-Unfathomable Ruination / current Akercocke bassist FB, and TMK of Adorior / Grave Miasma in place of PG and AC, respectively) has forced guitarist and founding member MB to be the singular singer for the new record, in contrast to the multi-vocal delivery from different members in previous works. In a way, this is to the advantage of the devastating nature of The Summoning Bell as more straightforward death metal than anything else. The production retains enough murk to shroud the instrumentation in a thick, fungal haze, yet it feels like a marked step up from the overly impenetrable fog of Across Deaths, making me think the band has achieved a better sound balance this time.

While there is no strict conceptual direction to the album, and as hinted by the grimly beautiful front cover, its themes evoke ultimate anguish, reflecting on life’s gray-toned procession and the muffled heartbeat of a world long past caring. The title itself might be a vague inspirational tip of the hat to fellow Irishman Samuel Beckett’s absurdist works, and especially the bell in Happy Days, or the whistle in Act Without Words. Malthusian creates breathing spaces with the inclusion of an intro, outro and interlude, with each one feeling essential to better navigate through an album of this weight (no such reprieve was offered in the debut). Right after the opener “Isolation”, the band’s mastery first announces itself with the plague-scented, swelling riffstorm of “Red, Waiting”, a supercharged kick-off to the main body of the record and the enormity that follows.

Ferocity reaches terrifying levels every time tempo is picked up, where Malthusian’s barbarity is anointed with the putrid essence of bands like Dead Congregation in their less restrained self, naturally Grave Miasma, but also at times nodding at Immolation (e.g. in “Between Dens and Ruins”) or later Morbid Angel (e.g. in the first part of the self-titled track) style guitar lines. The slower-paced, elephantine sections also feel well-earned, like in the middle of “Red, Waiting” or “Erased Into Superstition”, yet the latter is an interesting case: while I am a big fan of the furious discordant riffing at the start, and the Deathspell-esque, middle-paced bridge in between the death metal mayhem, the band introduces a sort of unhinged, clean vocal chant towards the end that didn’t sit well with me at that instance of the record.

As far as “Erased Into Superstition” goes, the conscientious listener may also pick up on a guitar solo with just an ounce of more melody than usual for the standards of Malthusian, a pursuit that harks back to the band’s split with Suffering Hour and specifically “Dissolution of Consciousness”, adding to the grandeur of this intriguing, yet slightly unstable piece. I encountered similar flow disturbances in the undisputed centerpiece of The Summoning Bell, the 15-minute “Amongst the Swarms of Vermin”, and specifically the abrupt change around the ninth minute. Other than that, the track’s sheer scope is formidable and builds into looser song-writing in the process of preparing for the closer “In Chaos, Exult”, which paradoxically might have felt less distracting in my head, if it was actually one 20+ minute colossal composition, rather than split into these two final tracks.

All in all, Malthusian’s new offering is packed with first-rate, ambitious blackened death metal that praises their nonconformist character, dragging their feet through the overgrown graveyard of the human condition and forging the perfect soundtrack that goes with it. The Summoning Bell, apart from a couple of minor, largely unproblematic flow hiccups, spreads the darkness initially established with the band’s EP and first album, includes daring additions to the band’s musical architecture and shows their creative unrest, and conveys a clear take-home message of plain despair when listening to it. To be discussed and remembered.

8/10