Decrepisy : "Deific Mourning

  Crawling up from the cavernous depths where death metal plunges into a more depressive depth to meet in the melancholic tombs of doom, this Portland-based band oozes up with their follow-up to their 2021 debut. Featuring members of Negative Prayer, Vastum, and Coffin Rot, they manage to manifest an inner darkness into sonic form physically, by using their instruments as the conduit by which they are expressed. This enables the atmosphere to manifest from the music as a natural progression of where the sound should go rather than neatly checking off the boxes of required genre tropes. The solos add to the mood, rather than being an outburst of shredding for the sake of chaos. The title track serves as an example of this in motion. 

The deliberate chug of the guitar for "Dysautonomic Terror" provides a powerful backbone for the song to be built off. This could be thought of as death doom, though that is a label people associate with the Peaceville bands, and these guys' inspiration comes from a much different corner of 90s metal. "Spiritual Decay" spills from a more dissonant form of ambiance. The lumbering stomp accelerates into a more pit-churning take on the genre. It is how far these guys are willing to descend into darkness that sets them apart from most of their peers. There are some great experimental guitar tones also captured on this album to add to its eerie quality. There is a more chillingly oppressive quality to the deliberate pound of "Severed Ephemerality"  that accelerates as the song progresses. 

There is a more downtrodden march deeper into the lower levels of death doom with the tribal pulse of "Corpseless" that finds the growl of the vocals taking on a call-and-response-like chant. Midway into the song, this gives way to a more mosh-invoking pace. The last song "Afterhours" sounds like a more doom-laden take on early Swans with its droning pulse decorated by creepy guitar. I'll give this one a 10, it captures great depressive death metal sounds in a manner that is more for gazing dictated haze than what we typically think of with even the Incantation strain of classic death metal, but emotion of this feels more dangerous and real.