Review by Sonny for Slaughterday - Dread Emperor (2026)

I hadn't heard of these Germans before seeing this nominated as a monthly feature, so went into it completely blind. A bit of background digging reveals that Slaughterday were formed in 2010 and for most of their career to date they operated as a duo with Jens Finger taking care of the six- and four-strings and Bernd Reiners the drums and vocals with a huge cast of supporting drummers, bassists and guitarists helping them out with their live shows. However, for this their fifth full-length, they have inducted reinforcements into their ranks and have expanded the band into a five-piece with Christian Wiesener taking over bass duties, André Janssen drums and Tobias Koops boosting the six-string attack as second guitarist.

So what do we have here? Well, this is pretty much meat and potatoes old-school death metal with obvious influence from usual suspects such as Autopsy, Bolt Thrower and Vader and I say that with no hint of sniffiness because that is exactly the kind of death metal that floats my particular boat. Sure, the more demanding death metal listener will likely feel unfulfilled by the lack of ambition displayed on "Dread Emperor", but I don't imagine that upsetting the Slaughterday guys that much. The performances are very solid indeed, the band obviously know their way around their instruments and have an excellent grasp of what OSDM is about. After a portentious instrumental intro track the band charge out of the blocks with opener proper, "Obliteration Crusade", and proceed to attempt to rip your face off with sheer riff power. Throughout this and the subsequent eight tracks they deploy a withering arsenal of riffs in order to batter down any resistance to their undemanding, but energetic, old-school blitzkrieg. Reiners' vocals are rough, gruff, roaring bellows and are plenty powerful while the rhythm section drive in the rhythmic piles upon which the individual tracks are built in an unshowy wholly dependable way. There is a significant amount of soloing present on "Dread Emperor" and it is with this that I have reservations. The thing is that the solos are actually quite melodic, even to the point of sounding like Maiden or Priest solos at times and I am not completely convinced that they suit the violence of the riffs and vocals, consequenly making the album as a whole sound a lot less aggressive and menacing than it should. I would have preferred more Kerry King and less KK Downing. I have been a big defender of James Murphy's contribution to Death's "Spiritual Healing" where a similar argument can and does get used, so this may be a bit of a hypocritical stance, but I think Murphy's skill was to enhance the more brutal aspects of "Spiritual Healing", where I find the melodicism of the solos here distracting.

Still, that aside, I love the riffs which still manage to give me that warm, fuzzy, OSDM buzz that I can just never get enough of so, derivative and unambitious it may well be and, in truth, I am unlikely to be running out to score a copy any time soon, but I actually quite enjoyed it and that is good enough for me. That cover is pretty badass too. I have been playing the Elder Scrolls Oblivion remake on PS recently and the creature on the cover is exactly like one of Oblivion's Nether Liches, tough bastards that they are!