If there has been one record in 2023 that was released on the perfect label, then Tithe’s Inverse Rapture might fight each and every album for that title because there might not be a more suitable home for it than Profound Lore with its knack for releasing angry, extremely dense records in various shapes and forms of metal. Inverse Rapture is able to take on all of these incarnations!

The Canadian label from Ontario has released records by Vanum, Pallbearer, Altar of Plagues, Full of Hell, Agalloch, Sumac, Bosse-De-Nage, Bell Witch to name just a few – one thing that is surely true for all of these: They do not care about whether we like it or not, but their music is – up to a certain point – only for themselves and if anyone else likes it even better. Tithe from Portland Oregon have done so already once when they released Penance (here our review), their first full-length on Tartarus Records from Holland. Their change to Profound Lore makes total sense to that extent.

They are dealing with the problems that a large portion of mankind has dealt with in the last three years, the sufferings dealt to most of us by the Covid19-pandemic and the ensuing problems stemming from that disease. Guitarist and vocalist Matt Eiseman took the chance to use music as one way of coping with the lose of his mother, whose health had already been pretty bad before catching the virus, which then took her from him. One might argue, that this on the other hand reversed a process of slowly dying into one that happened in a much shorter time. A medical inversion switching the process – that’s the story behind ”Inverse Rapture”</>, the title track for Tithe’s second full-length. And throughout the record, we find more hints at how many of these problems really are man-made, for example on ”Parasite” which rubs the noses of the ignorant into what mankind is to this planet.

Musically, this record is a fast-paced, well-balanced mix of all the genres one might associate with Profound Lore. We get fast-paced attacks like ”Demon” which might be seen as a companion piece to some of the songs by Full of Hell. Blackened Death-Metal close to Grindcore without ever slipping into Pig Destroyer-chaos because this trio here surely know how to keep dissonant melodies in check. ”Killing Tree” on the other hand is a little bit cleaner but much more on the sludgier end of Black Metal with all its thundering riffs. When listening to the middle part of ”Luciferian Pathways of the Forked Tongue” on the other hand we get a very groovy passage that is as close to clean style metal as Tithe can probably go and that is not too far because the hurricanes on this record go hand in hand and keep you bound to the ground.

By and large, one must say that the guys did a really good job of keeping their dissonant elements in check and not letting the chaos take over. That surely is not easy, when having to deal with such blows and with a world generally rotting away under our heels and at our hands. Inverse Rapture is an Extreme Metal at its core and doesn’t want to hide it. Genre-fans will love and otherwise will have to look for a better record from a more suitable label. Profound Lore doesn’t care. Tithe doesn’t. Neither do I. Pressing replay.