Cutterred Flesh – The Shapes of Hidden Malice
Release Date: 13th November 2026
Label: Transcending Obscurity
Bandcamp
Genre: Brutal Technical Death Metal
FFO: Aborted, Cattle Decapitation, Job for a Cowboy, Benighted, Devourment, Enragement, Monuments of Misanthropy, Brodequin, Shadow of Intent, Cryptopsy, The Last of Lucy.
Review By: Malte Brigge
As a world literature teacher, I never in a dozen lifetimes expected to receive a literary education at the hands of savage Czech institution Cutterred Flesh. Their seventh LP, The Shapes of Hidden Malice, continues their growth away from cartoon gore into more mature, conceptual writing, a shift started on 2024’s delightful Love at First Bite. The Shapes of Hidden Malice, a proficient and thoughtful work, draws from a range of classic and lesser-known horror stories to guide the writing. Each song connects to writers as obvious as Poe and Lovecraft as well as names that may be new to some of us, such as Poland’s Stefan Grabiński, China’s Pu Songling and Uruguay’s Horacio Quiroga. Cutterred Flesh don’t simply retell the stories, but have crafted a careful exploration of the nature of fear in each of them. There’s still monster-spilled blood a-plenty and riffs ga-fucking-lore, but also a penetrating, first-person, psychological account of paranoia, obsession, monstrous intrusion and cosmic malice.
Cutterred Flesh does not waste your time. Across thirty-four claustrophobic minutes, The Shapes of Hidden Malice has zero fluff, zero bloat, and for all its flailing excess, zero extraneous weight. With early Aborted ferocity, Cattle Decapitation dexterity, and thematic devotion worthy of Monuments of Misanthropy, Cutterred Flesh have neither abandoned nor acquiesced to their renowned brutality; they’ve infused it with sizzling technicality, moody symphonics, virtuous shredding, and a hint of deathcore viciousness. Atmospheric piano adds a flesh-crawling tone to the final moments of opener The Mad Farmstead and casts an ominous pall over closer Berenice. Occult choral staccato on The Colour out of Space and Mimi-Nashi-Hoichi mocks human fragility in the face of cosmic indifference. Every distorted note captures feelings of psychosis and existential terror while Jiří Krš unleashes his powerful vocal range, shrieking in higher blackened rasps, roaring through demonic purges, and plunging to gutbusting depths. Hana Hajdová’s (Silent Stream of Godless Elegy) brief but menacing guest appearance on The Feather Pillow sticks deep, elevating both song and album to serious list contention.
Vitalij Novak and Martin Meyer bore into your amygdala with riffs that sizzle, riffs that cut, riffs that haunt, riffs that crush. Le Horla churns like boiling stomach acids; The Willows roots into your sanity with thick, soul-drenched chords that become snappy, harmonized leads; The King in Yellow sirens on top of skull-smashing chugs; The Letter U stabs like needlework into your cortical circuits. Point to any moment on any song and you find ambitious guitar work that fluidly rolls, spills, and devours its way through ideas. If I had one complaint about the album, it’s the lack of repetition, because some brilliant passages zoom past, heard again only on relisten. I find myself continually pressing play because the album always ends too soon; leave them wanting more, goes the showbiz mantra, but if every song had even an extra half-minute of their violent virtuosity, I would not mind in the least.
That might risk the health of the musicians, though. How Jakub Bayer’s otherworldly drumming doesn’t kill him every performance remains unsolved. Amidst unceasing blasts, roiling fills and deft bell taps cut through the mix with stunning clarity and precision. His dynamic performance (reminiscent of Navene Koperweis on Job for a Cowboy’s Moonhealer) reveals a profound understanding of how ferocious, technical drumming works, and credit to whoever produced this for allowing such a performance such personality. The snare snaps powerfully, ultrafast kicks retain physical resonance, light cymbal work seems inhuman and almost whimsical atop the ceaseless aggression, and I’d like to point your attention to two booming measures of extra-dimensional snare in the middle of The Letter U, a brief moment of shocking power. Ondřej Klaban complements the narrow space between instruments with a palpably thick bass tone that never disappears, however frantic everyone else’s performance gets. Whether it’s solid foundational work on Le Horla or highlighted gurgling on The Painted Skin, he induces sickening, boggy depths to each song.
The Hidden Shapes of Malice is not only Cutterred Flesh’s most ambitious album, tight runtime notwithstanding, but it might be their best. By drawing inspiration from diverse sources for thematic cohesion, they are able to infuse their core brutality with conceptual technicality and vocal viciousness. Cutterred Flesh have distilled the essence of properly terrifying writers without falling into derivative or tropey traps. The Hidden Shapes of Malice is a clawing, eldritch ferocity channeling cosmic powers beyond our comprehension, and it has no interest in your sanity.
(4 / 5)
