Serpent’s Verdict by Ophiolatry is a nightmare creature brought to life, with razor sharp teeth, dead lifeless eyes, and a hungry that can never be satisfied. It is the musical equivalent of being in the path of an oncoming avalance, if that avalance was made of brutal and unforgiving guitar riffs, bass runs that threaten to reach into your throat and pull your stomach out through your mouth, drums that shake the air like tectonic plates shifting, and vocals that roar as if they’re dredged from the depths of the earth.
It may have taken them 17 years to release a new album, but it was worth the wait as Ophiolatry have delivered pure, unadulterated, Extreme Death Metal with Serpent’s Verdict.
I’m just annoyed it’s taken me so long to get around to reviewing it.
It is an amazing technical achivement, a constantly shifting constellation of musical ideas, that sees each member of Ophiolatry play with such ferocity and complexity that I can only imagine that fingers must have bled and drumsticks must have shattered into shrapnel. A dense, living ecosystem of sound that shifts and moves in a thousand directions, but always in unison.
Every track is perfectly crafted, a self contained story presented on a plate of furious Death Metal, covering subjects as diverse as ancestral pain, war defiance, and spiritual reckoning. And not once across Serpent’s Verdict 13 tracks does it ever flag.
The sonic assault is relentless and doesn’t let up, and neither do you want it to. You want it to punish you, to force you to kneel at its altar and praise your new serpent overlords, and you do so quite willingly..
Serpent’s Verdict isn’t just another death metal album — it’s a declaration, a brutal reaffirmation of Ophiolatry’s place among the genre’s elite. It takes everything that defines Extreme Death Metal — speed, precision, fury, and unflinching aggression — and channels it into something both terrifyingly violent and beautifully intricate. Seventeen years is a long time to wait, but this record feels like the band spent every second sharpening their blades, readying their instruments not just to perform, but to conquer. It leaves you bruised, breathless, and begging for more, the kind of album that reminds you why you fell in love with this music in the first place. If this is the verdict, then I happily accept my sentence.
Serpent’s Verdict is out now.
CHOICE CUT: Human Factory
RATING: 4 OUT OF 5
RATING SYSTEM:
- 0: Fucking Shit
- 1: Shit
- 2: Not Bad Shit
- 3: Pretty Good Shit
- 4: Amazing Fucking Shit
- 5: The Best Shit You Will Ever Hear
PRESS SOURCE: ASHER MEDIA RELATIONS. Jon Asher – Music Publicist. Facebook @AsherMediaRelations. Instagram @AsherMedia. Tweet @AsherMedia.
