A one-man band from Australia named after a Pokémon, there's not much that immediately draws the seasoned metal veteran towards Snorlax. And that's even before you get to the obsessive-compulsive music nerd fact that the project's debut album is both less than twenty-five minutes long and titled II! Yet the artwork is suitably dank and dark, and the heavy morass of blackened death metal that meets your ears when you press play is equally so. Mixing a whole bunch of underground influences in, everything from old-school black and death metal to more modern cavernous death metal, Snorlax manages both melody and crushing heaviness in each of the six tracks here. It's not perfect; the songwriting is sharp but feels repetitive even though the album is so short.

Yet for a debut release, II is excellent. The short, intense blasting of opener Infernal Devourment introduces the album well, something like Anaal Nathrakh playing old school death metal, and the even shorter The Resin Tomb acts as a punctuation stop on that. It ups the intensity and leads into The Chaos ov Iron Oppression well, as that track focuses a little more on melody, slowing the tempo and allowing for a more blackened atmosphere. Longest track present Mind ov Maggots (at six minutes plus) is definitely among the best, opening with slow, almost Triptykonic riffs then switching suddenly to the fastest, blackest rumbling on the album, switching up the tempo from fast to slow and back again, and coming over as a compelling crossover between black metal and Incantation-esque death metal.

Sure, that's a big promise to fulfil, but Snorlax does well enough with it here to convince that it's a possibility. Encapsulated Apocalypse pushes the envelope with more despairing, wild vocals atop the pounding blackened death metal, a bit of headbangable groove emerging in the second half, and closer Impending Abysmal Wretchedness acts as a spiritual echo of Mind ov Maggots with more raw blackened blasting. A short yet very solid release, Snorlax is a name to watch even if you're not a Pokémon fan.