Album Review: Scalpture - Landkrieg
Reviewed by Sam Jones
Scalpture are one of the newer bands amongst death metal to have made, and are continuing to make, a sizeable impact in the modern world of metal. Hailing from North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, Scalpture are helping bringing fresh and familiar eyes likewise back to Germany once more with the upcoming release of their fourth album: Landkrieg. Formed in 2009 the band’s adoration of military themes within extreme metal was made immediately apparent with their first Demo, released a year later, titled Born Into Battle, eventually succeeded by their first EP in 2015: Border Crossing. Just one year on Scalpture would unleash their debut full length work, Panzerdoktrin to vast acclaim. The wheels were now rolling as Scalpture were soon churning records out, one after another, with 2020’s Eisenzeit and 2022’s Feldwärts. The same year Scalpture worked on a Split with fellow Rhine-Westphalia hailing act, Reckless Manslaughter (they released their latest album last year), and since then the battlefields were quiet for Scalpture. Now primed to release album four, Landkrieg, (or Landwar), for March 7th, the record is set to be the band’s first alongside Testimony Records and features a strikingly gorgeous artwork as painted by Eliran Kantor, though juxtaposed with the clear violence depicted on the cover. I’ve been meaning to check Scalpture out, having discovered them through Eisenzeit during the 2020 lockdowns but, now, here is an opportunity to finally give Scalpture their due.
Landkrieg isn’t holding anything back once the album gets underway, though it technically begins with a quaint acoustic piece. The atmosphere surrounding their overall performance is massive as one can feel their riffs and vocals not only encompass but surpass your physical person. This is a record whose sound manages to swell and swell to monstrous proportions until there is nought else for our attention to focus on but the soundscape they’re offering. The riffs are these blocky fists that are just as solid as they are capable of running right through you; the band’s approach to death metal is reminiscent, like many war-themed bands, to Bolt Thrower though the difference in this instance is Scalpture play much faster, forgoing the crunching aesthetic familiar in tank tracks and embracing a full-scale artillery bombardment instead. Whilst you may not feel the ground shake as totally, you are made witness to the devastation made feasible with industrialised carnage.
Scalpture are clearly a band who enjoy their soundscapes big to the point of overflowing, but no matter how much they fill their glass it never runs the risk of spilling over; had they been even more cavalier with their mix it could have been too much but thankfully it’s just the right amount of volume and power thrown upon us. Take the bass for example, in any contemporary extreme metal record the bass might be playing along in the background or a band will find a way of entwining the bass into the main weave of the songwriting, to the detriment of the bass as an individual instrument. Scalpture, however, throw it right into your face not merely with chunky basslines that are constantly audible and present but throughout even the most frantic periods of their performance. You’ll be able to experience and enjoy whatever the bass and riffs are throwing at you simultaneously without either one lessening the other’s quality. The band aren’t one who are going to shy away and tuck things away for the sake of small niceties; it’s being thrust right in your face for they’re proud of what they’ve accomplished here.
Sometimes you hear an album where the band are hoping to play fast in order to make up for a lack of power otherwise portrayed if they hadn’t played quickly. I think had Scalpture toned down the tempo somewhat, that wouldn’t degrade the band’s ability to drag you along its rapturous, cyclonic ride for you get the impression that this record’s character is perfectly ordinary for the band; the fact that Landkrieg is always gunning for your throat only makes their performance all the more volatile. You may not get any slow tracks off the band but you do get one or two more nuanced, developed moments here and there which help give Scalpture a sense of time and patience thrown into their writing processes. Within the first tracks you know what you’re going to get but that hasn’t stopped the band from really ensuring their record stands out from the crowd. The speed they play at only emphasises the power bristling within their palms and owing to the massive soundscape they bring us, it envelops us entirely injecting one dose of adrenaline after another as we move from one track to the next, constantly reinvigorating ourselves in fury and blood.
Vocalist Thorsten Pieper might have one the most commanding presences on album I’ve heard in some time. When any band performs their vocals you want them to reach the audience and beyond, right to the back; when Thorsten does so his vocals reach just that and then some and then, breaking the wall down, projects his vocals even further. This isn’t a vocal performance where it feels like the band have made specific space on record for the delivery, rather it’s as if the vocals barge their way past everything else the band throw at and then just bark it out; there’s nothing illustrious or pretty about Scalpture’s vocal performance. It’s right in your face and beyond and like the songwriting, there’s little warning given as to the devastating impact they’re capable of. Words and even individual syllables are thrown out therewith little impending sign of their utterance which lends the delivery a proportion of malice and blunt force impact reminiscent to the very combat they’re playing music about. It’s death metal in the vein of Bolt Thrower except it’s performed with the unapologetic savagery familiar within Asphyx’s sound.
In conclusion, Landkrieg is a record that absolutely explodes and continues to detonate with each successive track; there are no blast beats and only a minimal number of guitar solos contained within yet it still manages to be one of the most crushing releases this early part of 2025. The unapologetic and relentless quality Scalpture play with is something that, like myself, will quickly endear you not solely to this record but all others they have out prior. If this is the average output by the band then it makes their back catalogue a rapidly exciting prospect. Experiencing Landkrieg is a rush since every track not only has something to keep us engaged but possesses a momentum that doesn’t abate simply because a song is over with; there’s often some piece of it latching onto your mind as you load up the next track so though you’re going one by one through the record, it becomes this seamless transition of violence fuelled by violence. However we mustn’t think, from this review, that Scalpture are just meat and potatoes death metal, rather they are meat and potatoes death metal done right because you get precisely what you think the band will give you, but they still make sure that experience is top tier with competently written and performed songwriting, vocals that blast your organs inside out etc. How Scalpture haven’t broken into the pantheon of modern death metal bands today I couldn’t say but, here’s hoping, Landkrieg is that final push into the spotlight the band deeply deserve. I’m off to check out their entire back catalogue now.
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