Prepare to get violently dismembered.

Killing of a Sacred Deer have quickly carved out a place in the modern deathcore and metallic hardcore underground, and their Encephalic Angels feels like a nasty collision between MySpace-era deathcore, modern production, horror soundtracks, and complete musical chaos. Coming from Canada and featuring members connected to Serration, World of Pleasure, Mortality Rate, and Secret & Whisper, the band clearly know their way around heavy music. What makes this work is that they aren't simply recreating old deathcore. They take familiar breakdowns, gutturals, blast beats, and chugs and surround them with glitchy samples, strange textures, ugly guitar tones, and abrupt transitions. At just under 23 minutes, the album also moves quickly enough that the constant brutality never has much time to become exhausting.

“A Congealed Miasma” immediately establishes the atmosphere with an ominous buildup of strange sounds and voiceovers before exploding into frantic guitars, rapid drums, thick bass, and deep gutturals. The transition feels like a jump scare, and the song keeps that unstable feeling through its mixture of groove-heavy riffs and abrasive bursts of noise. The snare has a sharp crack, the cymbals add plenty of chaos, and the slower sections give the bass and guitars enough space to hit hard. “Of Melded Flesh” pushes the glitchier side further, combining fast drumming, abrasive guitars, and constantly shifting vocals that move between deep lows and higher screams. Despite all the noise, there is still a strong bounce underneath the riffs, which keeps the song from becoming completely directionless.

“...you will know them by their eyes” takes a more straightforward metal approach, with heavier guitars and deeper rhythmic sections. It doesn't have quite the same bizarre character as some of the surrounding tracks, but that actually helps the pacing because the album needs moments where the band simply locks into a groove and lets the heaviness speak for itself. “Cerebral Data Extraction” brings the experimentation back with glitching sounds, oversized chugs, awkward rhythmic shifts, and some particularly tight drumming. The bass gives the guitars a huge foundation, while the vocals move between different textures without losing their connection to the riffs.

“TERRORPHAGE” demonstrates how effective the band's short songs can be. At barely over a minute, it simply unloads fast drums, deep riffs, harsh vocals, and sharp transitions before disappearing. There isn't enough time for the song to become repetitive, and the sudden ending almost feels like the band decided they had done enough damage and moved on. “[ascendance sequence]” works more like a disturbing atmospheric interruption, using distorted sounds and eerie textures to reset the album before the next attack. These shorter moments help give the record some breathing room without ever feeling like filler.

“Cognitive Reconfiguration Procedure” is one of the more complete examples of what the band are capable of. It starts slower before building into heavier riffs and increasingly aggressive vocals, with ugly little guitar runs hiding between the larger chugs. The groove in the middle gives the song something immediately memorable, while the drums keep shifting between speed and weight. “CHROME_DEVIL” takes that formula into a more warped direction, with distorted guitars, pinch harmonics, deep chugs, and vocals that become especially nasty. The transitions feel deliberately disorienting, making the song sound less like a collection of breakdowns and more like one continuous attack.

The title track, “Encephalic Angels,” featuring fromjoy, brings several of the album's ideas together. The drums are bold, the bass is thick, and the guitars remain defined enough that the low end doesn't turn everything into mud. There is a strong groove underneath the aggression, making this one of the more controlled tracks on the record. The breakdown eventually brings everything together, while the cymbal work adds movement around the slower guitar pattern. “Dried Flowers Bathed in Cystic Emulsion” then provides another creepy atmospheric reset before “12.7mm from Death,” featuring Church Tongue, closes things out with massive guitars, deeper rhythms, and another barrage of extreme vocals.

The rhythm section is one of the strongest parts of Encephalic Angels. The bass gives the guitars weight without completely disappearing beneath them, while the drums provide much more than simple speed. The constant changes in cymbals, kick patterns, fills, and intensity keep the songs moving. The guitars also deserve credit for giving the album its identity. There are plenty of familiar deathcore ingredients, but pinch harmonics, strange scaling passages, distorted slides, and awkward rhythmic changes make the riffs feel more abrasive than a straightforward nostalgia trip.

The vocals are equally varied, moving between deep gutturals, fry screams, higher screams, pig squeals, and harsher textures. That variety works because the instrumentation is constantly changing as well. The production ties everything together with a dense but punchy sound that allows the album to remain heavy without becoming completely muddy. The biggest weakness is that the similar production textures and low-end-heavy songwriting can occasionally cause individual songs to blur together, especially when listening to the album in one sitting.

Still, the short runtime keeps that problem from becoming too significant. Encephalic Angels feels less like a collection of completely separate songs and more like one extended trip through some kind of corrupted horror game. The samples, glitches, interludes, breakdowns, and sudden transitions all contribute to that atmosphere. Killing of a Sacred Deer are doing something different with deathcore here. They have taken familiar ingredients and given them enough ugliness and personality to make the result their own.

Encephalic Angels is loud, nasty, chaotic, and surprisingly fun. The riffs hit hard, the drums are constantly moving, the vocals are completely unhinged, and the weird production gives the album an identity beyond simply being another deathcore release. There are moments where the chaos could use a little more variation, but the band's ability to balance brutality with groove keeps the record engaging. Killing of a Sacred Deer have taken the old deathcore playbook, thrown it into a fucking blender, and somehow made the mess work.