Every 4 years or so, Germany’s rabid blackened thrash slime eaters Desaster drop a new album on the revolted masses. Their berserk take on speed borrows greatly from the original Destruction EP, Sentence of Death, and they festoon the unhinged recklessness with blackened blisters and classic heavy metal influences for a sound that slaps, slices, and shits on your floor. It’s not subtle, nor is it “thinking man’s music.” Instead, it murders the thinking part of your brain and activates the most base and perverse instincts. On odious gems like Divine Blasphemies and The Arts of Destruction, they pour all the world’s bile and crust-poo into a pressure cooker, cover the steam valve, and turn it to 12. The resulting explosion is predictable and unsurvivable. At their best, Desaster bring a level of sheer mayhem few bands can match. Will 10th album, Kill All Idols be another nuclear crematorium eruption, or has advanced age finally slowed the bloodlust of these inveterate axe murderers?

Speaking of a lack of subtlety, things open savagely with “Great Repulsive Force,” and damn if it doesn’t live up to its moniker. This is ferocious blackened thrash with absolutely no fucks given. It tries to turn your ears into gumpaste with blasting speed and subhuman vocals before sliding into a doomy mid-tempo slog, and just as you breathe a sigh of relief, the blinding speed and deathhammers are back for the attack. It’s the entire Desaster experience distilled into a 3-plus-minute toxic gummy slug. It segues seamlessly into “Emanations of the Profane,” which prominently features their penchant for slick traditional metal riffing overlaid by vocals that foam at the mouth, nostrils, and nipples. The bouncingly jaunty riffs pair well with the extreme vocal terror, and there’s a weirdly joyous vibe to the whole thing that almost conceals the hideousness of the purgatorial abominations it summons. It’s macabre yet unnaturally appealing (much like this here blog).

Other classic Desaster disasters include the rough n’ raw “Towards Oblivion,” which sounds like early 1980s Sodom grossly copulating with the prize-winning filth-hog at the Iowa State Fair as thousands of appalled spectators look on. The lead riff is especially tasty and sticks in the mind trap quickly. The title track sounds like classic Desaster trying to steal 664 of Bütcher’s 666 goats for a sleazy goat swap party, and the brutish, unrefined caveman thrash flies at unsafe speeds. Songs that didn’t hit hard immediately due to their reliance on milder traditional metal idioms, like “Fathomless Victory,” soon grew on me because of their cool, creepy mood. Yet not everything sticks like blood blasphemy on the church wall. The short and ugly “They are the Law” is a by-the-numbers speedster that lacks memory anchors, and penultimate track “Stellar Remnant” is too mellow for a Desaster release, even though vocalist Sataniac does his best to compel you with his lunatic theatrics. That these two cuts ride side-by-side creates a late-album valley that the interesting instrumental outro can’t recover from. At 40 minutes, Kill All Idols packs about 33 minutes of successful Bathory bathing in moldy Sodom Sauce, and that’s not a terrible ratio.

As ever, Sataniac is the star attraction of this unholy freak show. The dude is one of the most unhinged vocalists in metal, and though he must be getting up there in years, he still sounds like a complete nutter on a nut-finding expedition. Blackened snarls, proto-death roars, hysterical screams, throaty bellows; he uses them all and sometimes all in the same lyrical refrain. He always sounds like he’s being recorded from a nervous hospital, and on the best tracks, he adds to the body count. On the lesser tracks, he still stacks corpses like a remorseless corpse staker, and for his efforts, he should be canonized by the fucking Pope while alive. Left-hand man, Infernal does his best to keep pace with unending thrash and black metal leads, and when he isn’t burning up the fretboard, he’s tossing out stadium-rocking trad metal riffs. The only impediment to the album is the uneven songcraft, which drops the severed head from time to time.

Desaster will always have a special shelf in the Crypt ov Steel, and there’s always grotesque fun to be found on their albums. Kill All Idols is a small step down from 2021s Churches Without Saints, and it seems their wellspring of demonic inspiration is slowly bleeding out, but the hellfire burns bright enough to score some wins. These olde hellhounds still have enough teeth to rip you open, so give this a spin and send bystanders into a terror-tizzy.



Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: | Format Reviewed: 256 kbps mp3
Label: Metal Blade
Websites: total-desaster.jimdofree.com | desaster.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/666Desaster666
Releases Worldwide: August 22nd, 2025

Give in to Your Anger: