Since their formation in 2010, Australia's TYRANNIC have been a steady study in sonic defiance. The band's earliest demo and split recordings were largely the work of one Tyrannic Deluge, but by the time of their debut album, 2018's Ethereal Sepulchre, TYRANNIC expanded their lineup and also expounded upon the primitivist origins of their sound. Aptly titled, Ethereal Sepulchre was a foggy 'n' frightening statement of eerie blackened doom - or perhaps DOOMED BLACK? Either way, the trio tread upon the slimy foundation laid out by their forebears but also evinced a red-eyed personality all their own. That identity has fully come to fruition with TYRANNIC's second album, Mortuus Decadence, released in 2021 by IRON BONEHEAD. Somehow more immediate and distant simultaneously, the Aussies' second full-length flayed sanity with its ever-tumultuous and -twisting songwriting, instilling utter unease in even the hardiest listener. Now back to a power-trio, TYRANNIC continue the chaos-harnessed trajectory of its predecessor with their third album, Tyrannic Desolation. Aptly titled, there are indeed many moments of desolation across the eight-song / 48-minute record; while one could liken them to "doom" in its most skeletal sense, those moments stomp down and ring out with seemingly random rancor, as if the players had pushed their primitive pulse to its limit and then tumble to a rumbling plod. But, such usage simply underlines the very madness running rampant across Tyrannic Desolation. Taking treacherous turns as often as they left a bestial burst run uncomfortably long, TYRANNIC take demonic pleasure in the seemingly scattershot songwriting they employ. And just like Mortuus Decadence, A LOT happens across Tyrannic Desolation - and those endlessly rolling / roiling screeds of physicality continue to mutate in a manner most bizarre. If anything, Tyrannic Desolation by comparison imparts a greater sense of space and then hammers away any last vestige of "hook" or riff or whatever...and somehow, it eerily beckons further investigation, especially when faced with the vampiric-castle soloing found on "Dance On Graves Chained to the Labyrinth." Again, MADNESS. With their third full-length, TYRANNIC prove that these idiosyncrasies are no mere fluke, and the wild & weird terrain trod by the likes of old Samael, early Celtic Frost / Hellhammer, Hungary's Tormentor, Beherit, Brazilian iconoclasts like Impurity and Sextrash, or even very earliest Mayhem is very much also theirs. More cracked, more broken, more thirsty & miserable: this is Tyrannic Desolation!
