After nearly a decade since their last full-length and a few years after a brief demo, Anasarca are finally back with their fifth studio album, Achlys, and it's easily their fastest, most brutal, most intense and emotional album since their inception all the way back in 1995. Musically, they remain uncompromising with their trademark blend of dark, Demigod-esque riffs, guttural vocals, and airtight arrangements. The only real difference is that they've refined this formula down to a science, making every tremolo riff, blast beat, and dissonant melody feel deliberate and purposeful from both a musical standpoint and a narrative one, all of which is held together by a production that's clear enough to let the compositions breathe while still preserving the raw edge death metal needs to keep its bloody bite.

On the subject of narrative, vocalist/guitarist Michael Dormann has long shown a thoughtful, conceptual approach to songwriting and lyrics that puts him above the usual themes of gore, horror, and abstract brutality, and this album is no exception. The core of Achlys is grief, here presented in its rawest and most jagged forms as taken from the writings and poems of real people confronting this trauma, some of which are used as interludes and serve as moments of contemplation before delving into darkness again. That might make this sound distant compared to something more autobiographical, but Dormann manages to use these writings, works made to use words as a lifeline, to portray the pain and trauma of loss with intensity, sensitivity, and authenticity. This makes songs like "My Reality", the title track, and "Pale Remains" function not only as sonic battering rams, but also as poetic elegies, and that gives the music thematic resonance often missing in death metal and blends it with the expected ferocity to make a work that is darkly cathartic.

In a genre often centered around detached and often unserious external terrors, Anasarca dares to be personal, human, and tragic with Achlys, and it honors its subject matter with maturity and emotional honesty while delivering it with the weight of a freshly laid tombstone. I expect this album to be one of 2026's best death metal albums, but even if it isn't, it'll easily be among its most resonant.