In 2015, I checked out this band because it's the drummer from Altar of Plagues. They have only released one full-length and a split since then, so the Irish death metallers take their time. They also play in other bands like Grave Miasma. They open the album more aggressively than what I remember from this, which was a more cavernous, doomy atmosphere, but here the drums are bombastic and hammering at you. They slow into a more deliberate Morbid Angel-like riff, though the vocals are a low gurgle that works as a resonance more than a narrative. By the end of the song, the journey takes some awkward twists and turns, making it feel like a new song when it reaches the dismal end that builds once again into a blast beat.
"Between Dens and Ruins" finds things gathering up into a rabid flurry of blasts and dissonance, with the rasp of the vocals more layered. The bass steps forward to anchor the chaos more progressively. The shift into spewed vocals from the main gurgle creates dynamics along with the angular phrasing of the abstract guitar riffs. Things sound do grimy and brutal to think of this as technical death metal, but the nuanced timing is more complex than most of those shreddy death metal bands. It is opaque rather than hooky. The title track has more purpose. They slow down to achieve this and touch on darker sounds in doing so. The riffs are allowed to ring out more melodically. When they fail to resist the urge and speed up again, they sound like every other death metal band.
"Eroded into Superstition" finds a chaotic intro converging into a more powerful riff that offers more drive to the verse and gives the vocals more to work with. Then the momentum gets killed midway through the song when things drop down to a creepy riff that still works for me. It might be the album's best song. The 15 minutes of "Amongst the Swarms of Vermin" are excessive, no matter how much doom you are flirting with. They are doing some interesting things, just taking too long to unpack them as the song begins to drag just three minutes in, making me wonder how painful the throne of the next 12 minutes will be. The drummer takes an almost jazz-like approach to how he arranges the meter of this song. The chaotic solo sections create a Morbid Angel feel until they get too frantic for their own good.
The last song, "Chaos Exult," starts with a swath of atmosphere anchored by the drums. They hold this down as more of a jam for the first half of the song, as things slowly build to a more simmering boil. I wish they had worked this kind of mood into the other songs. I will give this album an 8.5, which puts it on par with 'Below the Hengiform". So if you liked that album, you will like this one, though in terms of composition, they do experiment a little more here.
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