Soul of Death is a melodic death metal band from Santo Domingo, formed in August 2004 by the guitarist Melvin Holguín, who plays as Focalor.

Two periods

The band was active from 2004 to 2015 and again since 2020. On its return it said it had been through some turmoil and was rising again with the same strength and brotherhood as before.

Records

Its first release was the EP «Apocalipsis», dated 2006 by the international metal database Encyclopaedia Metallum and June 2007 on the band’s Bandcamp page. The single «Spiritual Disease», released on 9 February 2020, marked the comeback, and the full album of the same name followed in 2023 on «Nefast Films Records». The database lists occultism as the band’s early subject and ancestral war, apocalyptic prophecies and mythology as its later ones.

Reception

Reviewing «Spiritual Disease» for Metal Forces Magazine, Neil Arnold gave it 7 out of 10. He described it as a well-produced, melodic and savage debut album, at moments a tamer version of Deicide, though better suited to the death metal scene of a decade earlier, and said that some tracks blur into one another.

Related bands

Rubén Mahfoud, a member of Soul of Death, also plays in «Múcaro», and Focalor created the one-man project «Sífilis de Nazareth» in 2015. Another former member, Vasago Imn, later played in Apofis Imn.

Legacy

In 2022 the metal site MetalSucks included Soul of Death in a list of fifteen bands from the Dominican Republic, and in 2023 the site The Dark Melody placed «Spiritual Disease» seventieth among the hundred best Latin American albums of the year.