This has to be the first time I’ve ever heard anything from Algeria. Yup, that’s right: Devast hail from North Africa. And if their Algerian countrymen are anything like Devast, there’s a fucking goldmine to be had in that country!

Devast play dark brutal death metal in a vein that can only be describe as Incantation using Gorguts‘ obtuse, knotting, experimental riffs with a dead ringer for Portal’s The Curator ominously growling and hawing throughout the record. Art of Extermination more or less throws around everything you love about Gorguts, Incantation, Portal, and Ehnahre into a blender, shreds them to bits, and then force feeds it to you through a hose capped off with jagged, torn steel rims. You get tweedingly riffs, bizarre guitar passages, burrowing percussive assaults, and a violent, tortured vocal performance that will easily please Onward to Golgotha fans.

Easily one of the better debuts of 2008, and a great surprise from a country and region not known for its extreme metal, Devast’s Art of Extermination is a venomous, bleak trip into the human psyche. And it’s not pretty. But that’s just the way we like it.

Written By: Necro-tron