Veterans of the Italian extreme metal scene Graveworm are back with their 10th studio album “Killing Innocence” after an eight-year hiatus since their 2015 album “Ascending Hate”, and it is definitely quite a great comeback. Graveworm has always managed to attract my attention with their unique blend of melodic black metal, gothic metal and death metal and that is pretty much the case here for “Killing Innocence”.

For the time they dropped in, Graveworm were a truly new band and since the last 20+ years of their existence, their sound has remained pretty much unchanged so you can expect a blackened gothic death metal hybrid with some great symphonic elements.

While I doubt anything in their catalogue can rival the greatness of their older albums such as “Scourge of Malice” or “Angels Reach the Beauty”, one thing to note however is that “Killing Innocence” may just be the Italian metal veteran’s heaviest album yet, as it wastes no time blasting the hell away with some awesome heavy riffs while giving us the taste of the same dish the Italians have been giving for all these years.

But after doing it for so long it makes more than enough sense that the sound is just so natural to them that it never gets stale or monotonous or boring, and while you would desire something additional, the album works just fine.

The vocals are mix of black metal shrieks and death metal growls while the guitars kind of mix in the polished blackened death metal formula with some melodic death metal in the style of Amon Amarth, Carcass or Insomnium thrown in with some thrash and blasting drums. Where the band improves upon is the keyboard work as they go back more to their gothic roots with some great, dark symphonic textures.

“Killing Innocence” may lack severely in dynamics and shows an unchanged style playing it pretty safe with a relatively one-track sound with rare changes in tone, it is well polished and greatly mastered showing the expertise of the extreme metallers. The album does nothing revolutionary, but it is sure as hell a very good time!

Score: 7.8/10