Album Review: Barren – Verderf
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
Belgian trio, Barren, return with a new full-length album, Verderf, this month, four-years on from the debut, I. Not that that Flanders-based three-piece have been idle in that time, having been busy with a series of split EPs with the likes of Vomit Spell, Sickrecy, Lesser Animal and Distaste, as well as gracing the stages at some of Europe’s most prominent extreme music events, including Germany’s Deathfest and Grind Nazi Scum festivals, Obscene Extreme in the Czech Republic, and our very own – and much missed, Doc – Grind After Death in Bolton.
For ’twas at the Alma Inn, 2025, that I first experienced Barren’s chainsaw grind in what was one of the sets of the day. When a band is able to boast members of Agathocles, Aborted, Emeth and Suppository, you’re always going to be onto winner.
Fourteen songs are on offer over Verderf’s nineteen-minute run-time, and Barren waste not a single moment with anything other than relentless aggression and savage devastation. Sub-one-minute blasters pepper the track listing: Earthcrusher feels like an unstoppable machine is chewing everything in its path; Swallow combines screams and grunts, Protestation oozes with thick, dirty riffs, while both Adversarial and Filth offer simple and effective old-school grind-beasts in the vein of Nasum and Rotten Sound.
Their chainsaw grind takes the buzzing tones of Swedish death metal and builds dense, crushing monuments of extremity: Leech leans heavily on newest band member, Stef Wouters’ bass to unleash a fast and furious romp; Algol rages through ripping lines and a searing solo, courtesy of Matias Dupont’s vast experience, loading in a breakdown and big drums from Llano Bergman.
Both Blades and Tyrants have a classically brutal death metal charge and Dying Fetus-grunts to sit alongside the grim and grizzly guitar lines and ferocious beatdown. The blurb says this album is not made for comfort and it’s easy to see that is the truth. It’s filled with short, sharp and shockingly precise blasts of destruction and decay, uncompromising riffs and a devastatingly crushing aggression.
The two aspects of Barren’s sound come together when the band go death grinding, through Scourge’s skipping lines, Abase’s grooving and textured riffs, and Apes’ breakdowns, all done with maximum bleakness and boisterousness.
Verderf is twenty-minutes of a band at the top of their game and blasting for all they’re worth. It’s the kind of record you put on when the world has maybe made you a little miffed and, rather than resort to extreme violence, you grab a brew and a biscuit and allow Barren to commit atrocities instead.
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