“Honey?” She creeps through the kitchen to a door that stands open but a crack, dull light streaming up from the cellar. Her husband’s workshop. He’s been spending an awful lot of time down there lately. She fears for his mental stability, but he swears that he is simply focused on his work.

And it is good work. In fact, the man insists, he hasn’t had a schizophrenic episode in weeks.

Trepidation filling her voice and slowing her steps, his wife calls out again. “Honey, it’s time for dinner.”

Downstairs, he hears it. That voice, so like his mother’s. Memories flash across the man’s vision, the gentle tones of her sweetly singing “Hush Little Baby,” and he can feel it coming on. A seizure. That gentle voice transforms into a low rumble, a bass tone. He fights against dizziness, fights to stay lucid despite the blood loss. His work isn’t finished. The rumble intensifies. He inserts the needle once more into his stomach and threads it through, biting back a scream, attaching the dead mockingbird’s flesh to his own.

Dinner can wait.

This happy little scenario predicates Necrobreed (Season of Mist), the sixth(-sixth-sixth) album and latest slab of madness to survive a bloody and violent passage through the birth canal of France’s Benighted. Vocalist Julien Truchan’s pen waxes poetic here on the depths into which the human psyche can devolve, and the soundtrack is fitting.

With standout tracks like ‘Der Doppelgaenger’, which pinballs between melancholy and minor-key tremolo picking and a relatively slow bang perfect for crashing your head into concrete, and ‘Monsters Make Monsters’, an insightful psychological commentary on how children often grow up to become just like their parents (complete with a centerpiece, wind-up music box section that no child would ever be able to sleep to), Necrobreed is, quite simply, death metal done right.

The straight-razor sharp riffing of guitarists Olivier Gabriel and Emmanuel Dalle is precise without being pretentious. Romain Goulon punishes the drums like a high-school bully on unsuspecting victims. And—gasp—Pierre Arnoux’s bass can actually be heard within the din, adding sonic depth to reverb-drenched guitars without drowning the sound in mud. No small feat for a band of their ilk.

You may not be familiar with Benighted, but you should be. Schizophrenic tendencies not required . . . though may occur as a result.

8.0/10

JASON KOROLENKO