A storm crawls over rusted Ohio steel. Sirens choke, the sky bruises black, and somewhere beneath it all, a tape hiss ignites—then boom, Christslave detonates like a basement ritual caught on burning celluloid. Church, as a band, doesn’t ease you in—they drag you through broken glass and feedback, opening with operatic riffs like a blade already buried in the skin. It feels filmic in the ugliest sense—grain, grit, violence—like something you weren’t meant to see, only survive. This is the kind of record that doesn’t start . . . it erupts.
Church operates as a four-headed weapon: Brock Stevens and Marc Jones splitting guitars and vocals into a jagged dual-front assault, Tommy Justice anchoring the low end while adding another throat to the chaos, and Brad Arnold—formerly of Doom Formation and Rotting Souls—hammering everything into dust. This isn’t just a lineup; it’s a pile-on. Three vocalists means no single perspective—just overlapping hatred, layered like collapsing walls. The result? Total suffocation.
“Godless Suicide” deserves its own warning label. It opens in a blur—drums detonating under Brad Arnold’s relentless barrage while the guitars tear in from both sides like sirens collapsing into distortion. Then it shifts—mid-song, the tempo lurches, slows just enough to feel heavier, like gravity suddenly got stronger. The triple vocal assault becomes clearer here, each voice clawing over the other, not harmonizing but fighting for dominance. By the back half, the track feels unstable—riffs bending, rhythms tightening like a noose—before it kicks back into speed for a final, violent surge. It’s not just an opener, it’s a descent: fast to suffocating to feral, dragging the listener from shock into full immersion with no chance to pull back.
Stylistically, they sit in that diseased intersection where blackened filth meets brute-force death metal. You can hear echoes of Beherit’s primitive darkness, the corpse-rot churn of Autopsy, and the thrash bite of Toxic Holocaust—but Church twists it into something meaner. “Pagans Wrath” and “Impious and Decay” don’t just riff; they grind forward like machinery failing in real time. “Soil the Witch” drops into a slower, doom-soaked crawl that feels heavier than speed ever could. And “Fiend of a Thousand Names”? That one spirals—riffs warping, vocals clawing over each other, like the song itself is trying to tear free.
By the time “Christslave” hits, it doesn’t feel like a finale—it feels like the last stage of a ritual. Everything is dirtier, louder, and more unhinged. And that’s the point: this record doesn’t clean up, doesn’t resolve, doesn’t give you closure. It just leaves you in the wreckage. The production is raw but intentional—nothing polished, nothing softened. You hear the room, the scrape, the violence. It’s not retro worship; it’s active decay. Church aren’t reaching for accessibility—they’re digging deeper into the underground, dragging you with them whether you’re ready or not.
Released March 2026 via Ablated Records, Christslave is circulating through the usual underground arteries—Hells Headbangers Records and Sevared Records—with CDs sitting around the $10 mark. It’s out digitally too, sure—but this one belongs in your hands, something scratched and real while it tears your head off. If you want safety, look elsewhere. If you want a lesson in brutality, Church just delivered it in full right here: CHURCH - Christslave CD — Ablated Records .
