Dead Peasants are a three piece blackened hardcore band from the mean streets of Baltimore. They originally formed in 2011 but didn’t release any recordings until early 2013, when they put out a split with fellow Marylanders, sludge metal band Ecco, and this, a half hour demo of raw, speaker-splitting blackened fury.

Dead Peasants‘ music mixes elements from doom, grind, sludge and the primal punky black metal aggression of a band like Ancestors. Tracks careen from four to the floor caustic blackened punk fury and wounded animal vocals to sludgy stretches of crawling, drawn out doom metal and piercing feedback, all with a haunting, echo-drenched melodicism that creates a truly oppressive, depressive atmosphere.

This demo has one of the most disgustingly, intensely lo-fi production jobs I’ve ever heard. Half of the tracks literally sound like they were recorded onto a boombox with blown-out speakers, but through all the crackling and sputtering hiss that will probably have you checking your own speakers at least once there is an almost buried but inescapable obsession with melody.

Dead Peasants are one of the most effective bands at truly combining the primitive immediacy of the newer punk-leaning proponents of blackened hardcore with the ice blooded atmospherics and plaintive, stirring melodicism that defined the original warlocks of early Norwegian black metal.

Not to mention that ‘Left Upon The Dark Winged Beast Of Festering Flesh And Heavy Breathing’ is undoubtedly one of the coolest track titles I’ve ever come across.