Abyssus - The Reign - Metal Epidemic

Abyssus – The Reign
Release Date: 23rd October 2026
Label: Fireflash Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Old School Death Metal
FFO: Obituary, Asphyx, Bolt Thrower.
Review By: Mark Young

The Reign is the Greek old schoolers third full-length album, in a recording career that started back in 2011. If you look online, you can see how busy they have been in terms of consistently releasing new music year on year. The approach is simple enough – channel groove and brutality in equal measures. You can’t fault their efforts on this; it goes to those extremes, but there is something missing from it to make it (and them) as essential as the bands that influence them.

Starting at a canter, The Meaning of Pain announces itself nicely, bounding along with those OSDM ingredients in place. It’s not that it doesn’t do what you expect it to do; there’s double bass, riffs and lead breaks that come in without overwhelming the song. What it doesn’t do is grab you by the throat, as you would hope the opening track should do. It’s a pattern that is established on Out of Reach, with an admittedly stomping build that has a bit more going for it than its predecessor. They are good, without being exceptional. Asphyxiation completes that opening trio with a strong pull from a more thrash-centric approach. In their defence, they don’t try to extend their songs out beyond a suitable length, and to be honest, this works in their favour. Later songs come in without leaving a mark, but at least they don’t reduce the amount of intensity set out at the start. The Path I Chose is a good example of this, a melding of different approaches into something that sounds more unique to them. This leans more to the rapid death metal that does excite, with Await the Final Call also dropping into this territory. It makes you wonder how I would have received this had this been the opening salvo from them. It’s all personal opinion anyway, and fans of those bands listed below should find something here that will scratch an itch for those wanting something that brings that old-school approach without wholesale theft.

They do mix it up, though, on Trapped in Purgatory, offering a slow crawl at first in what you could say is their statement track here. Eschewing the rapid in favour of building atmosphere, they still make it a heavy affair, but I’m not convinced that it should have been their final track. Still, they remember that it needs to take flight, and it moves through several builds before finally coming to a rest. What you have here is a good metal album, rather than a brilliant one.