Malthusian guitarist/vocalist Matt Bree is being thoughtfully circumspect when he posits, “When you put yourself in the right position, or in the right place, and you’re willing and able, things happen. And once you put the work in, things happen.”

The common threads running through the decade-and-a-half long history of Irish blackened death metal quartet Malthusian are synergetic occurrences, bulls being taken by their proverbial horns, happy accidents, fruitful toil and focused determination. Back in the early 2010’s Altar of Plagues drummer Johnny King and Bree — then playing in On Pain of Death — were Dublin roomies who bonded over record collecting and lengthy, obsessive discussions about extreme music while necking shots of whiskey and tins of Guinness. At the time, doom and brutal death metal dominated the Irish scene as the emerald isle suffered from a dearth of drummers able to rip at high velocities with requisite amounts of precision and stamina.

“Playing slow stuff in Dublin and Ireland was more about it being hard to find a drummer who could blast consistently and go for it. That was a motivating factor: having someone like Johnny who was willing and able to do it,” explains Bree.

Drawing on King’s experience in grindcore outfit Abbadon Incarnate, as well as Bree’s unwavering interest in the darkness purveyed by Immolation, Incantation and Morbid Angel, and a mutual admiration for then-new releases by Cruciamentum, Grave Miasma, Dead Congregation, Diocletian and Witchrist, the pair got together with their mates, Wreck of the Hesperus guitarist Andy Cunningham and Mourning Beloveth’s Pauric Gallagher, and Malthusian was born.

“None of us were playing any kind of death metal or in any kind of fast band,” notes King. "We just wanted to play crazy, unhinged death metal, really.”

The groundwork was laid. Following their debut gig in early 2013, Irish label Invictus Productions threw an offer on the table which begat the three-song MMXII demo,. Being one of the few Irish bands pushing tempos into redline territory and writing riffs that sounded like they came straight from Satan’s gullet and songbook shined a spotlight and had their profile quickly shooting upward. Invictus issued their Below the Hengiform EP in 2015. Tours were embarked upon at home and abroad with the likes of Altars of Plagues, Negative Plane, Imperial Triumphant and Primordial. They made festival appearances at Hell’s Pleasure in Germany, Wolfthrone Support in France and Martyrdoom in Brooklyn.

Remembers Bree: “We were writing, jamming and, between tours and fly-in shows, gigging constantly. We had the idea in place and we were thirsty."

A meeting with Matt Calvert of Colorado’s Dark Descent Records at Dublin’s Unconquered Darkness festival in 2015 opened the door to the next phase of the Malthusian story.

“Matt was over here doing a festival with [Invictus boss] Darragh [O’Laoghaire] here. We met up, were talking, drinking beers and it seemed like an easy option,” explains Bree. What emerged was an agreement for Dark Descent to issue the band’s debut full-length, Across Deaths in America while Invictus handled European territories. Despite that meeting being overall advantageous and resulting in Malthusian getting in more North American faces and ears, the actual process of making Across Deaths reality was an experience they would rather forget.

“The record was an arduous thing to get done and out and that sucked all the joy out of it,” sighs King. “We were happy with the songs, not so much with the production.” “And we took a year trying to produce it,” adds Bree. “We had just run out of steam and it became more annoying than anything.”

That dour mood also quashed the band’s gigging momentum. After Across Deaths release in September 2018, the Malthusian live ledger was pared down to small handfuls of shows and 2019 festival appearances at Kill-Town Death Fest, NRW Deathfest and Cork’s Monolith. Their live schedule wasn’t helped by original member Cunningham up and moving to Australia, though his spot was filled by Grave Miasma bassist/guitarist Tom McKenna, the obvious and perfect choice given he had previously filled in for Bree on a US tour.

“I was reluctant about going forward after the lineup issues because it was the four of us from the start,” recalls King, “but Tom was the obvious option. Everything culminated at a time after Across Deaths to naturally reverse the slow down.”

McKenna injected new energy into Malthusian, helped bring them back to stage and studio, via a 2019 tour and subsequent split with Minnesota’s Suffering Hour. Also breathing kinetic death breath into the band was their being asked to provide a song for 2023 Irish horror flick All You Need is Death which, after attending the film’s premiere and hearing their off-the-cuff composition in cinematic sound glory, stoked the flames of the fire that had been re-lit under their asses. Fast forward to the present and their second album of sinister blackened death metal, The Summoning Bell. It’s the band’s first under the Relapse banner, despite both parties being more than well aware of one another for the majority of Malthusian’s existence.

“We’ve actually been in contact with Relapse since the demo came out,’ says King surprisingly. "Every now and then they would hit us up, but we wanted to stay with Invictus at the time.”

“There wasn’t really the option to do an American release and have Invictus hold on to the European rights, so we didn’t want to rock the boat,” explains Bree. “Things were going very well and we were happy. It might seem weird and naive, but that’s the way it was. But then things changed. The split with Suffering Hour was the end of a chapter and it felt like it was something that was bookending something. We had been sending demos to Relapse and it seemed like the music was a bit different — faster, full-on, more straight up death metal — and it felt like the natural way to progress, that it was a bit of a rebirth with a new lease of life on things.”

Bree is being humble when he classifies The Summoning Bell as straight up death metal. The album is one that taps into death metal's sinister atonal darkness, but there’s a organic rawness to everything from the rapid fire drumming and trilling lurch of “Red, Waiting” and dive-bomb insanity of the title track to the guitars’ swarming melodic chaos in “Between Dens and Ruins” and undeniable groove of “Amongst the Swarms of Vermin.” This says nothing about the crafty balance of extreme music evil with book smarts and dark humor.

“The title is based on a Samuel Beckett play called Happy Days,” explains Bree, with a cageyness about how much he’s willing to reveal, “and it’s all about existential dread laced in incredible, inherent Irish humor. A lot of it fell into the idea of that when you set your intention, you find stuff right there waiting for you; things present themselves if you’re looking for them.”

Captured by Esoteric’s Greg Chandler at his Priory studio, The Summoning Bell is an album the members of Malthusian are proudest of having the Malthusian name slapped on. Chandler has provided production teeming with hollow warmth, coherence and definition. The songs are lean, mean killing machines inexorably tied to blackened wryness, extreme metal’s filthiest sounds as well as the band’s culture and heritage. And they are champing at the bit to shake off the cobwebs and open up a new chapter steeped in confidence with their new music, new label and new bassist Federico Benini who, according to Bree, “has added a different shade of unhinged to the band.”

Concludes King: “I’m looking forward to playing the songs, playing bigger gigs and seeing how it’s received. The production is amazing and I want to get out there and go on doing more.”