1/ Ghosts.
2/ The Virus.
3/ Event Horizon.
4/ Lucifer.
5/ The Haunting.
6/ A.I.
After unleashing a slew of upfront rave bombs with 'The Entity' and 'Sound Of Summer 3' albums, Xtrahard Records label boss Deadly Nightshade returns once more to take you on a trip to the darkside with the release of 'The Virus' mini-LP.
Our first entry hits us full-on with a barrage of manic breaks, ominous synth melodies and snippets of menacing movie dialogue to give you a moody, 1992 style slice of dark hardcore with 'Ghosts'. A track which ramps up the tension with it's rich tapestry of cinematic, orchestral stabs and brain scouring mentasm riffs to present a perfect taster for the hardcore mayhem that follows.
Album title track, 'The Virus' opens up to the sound of tribal drumbeats before morphing into a furious melting pot of twisted hoovers, thundering breakbeats and swirling synths overlaid by a pumping, 4/4 jungle-tekno kickdrum.
Taking us even deeper into the album's dark core, 'Event Horizon' pilfers sinister movie snippets from it's namesake, sci-fi horror flick and combines them with a series of ruff and rugged breaks, multi-layered stab melodies and a devastating Renegade Soundwave style bassline that'll get your head nodding in an instant.
Things get positively Satanic with the positively demonic 'Lucifer', which expertly invokes doom-laden bass patterns and monstrous rave riffs set to a monstrous hybridisation of rolling oldskool beats and crunching tech-step, breakbeat edits.
'The Haunting' up next goes all out 1993 style darkside-jungle by utilising sinister, Euro-hardcore rhythmic elements and interweaving them with tearing, 180 mph amens and Beltram-esque mentasms, which are then expertly contrasted by an immensely powerful drop to die for.
We are brought to spine-tingling close with the sci-fi flavoured, techno-hardcore crossover track, 'A.I.', which lures the listener in with it's richly textured opening third which builds itself up to a positively euphoric drop to shed a shard of light to break all the darkness, before descending back once more.
If your darkside hardcore leanings veer more towards the 1992 end of the rave spectrum, then 'The Virus' will more than satisfy your pitch black audio cravings.
The Breakbeatscientist's pick of the bunch is the lushly sinister 'A.I.'.
'The Virus' mini-album is available to download now from Deadly Nightshade's Bandcamp page for £7.00, or more if you wish to support the label and artists to fund future releases.
https://deadlynightshade3.bandcamp.com/album/the-virus
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