Chaotian - Effigies of Obsolescence (2022)

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Denmark’s murky death metal scene has been fertile ground for a death metal sound that I would say is uniquely its own—Purveyors of an atypical cavernous and oblique output with festering guitar chords and drums from hell!

It’s not that these things aren’t being done elsewhere, it’s just that Denmark is on its own level with its own ethos—Similar to New Zealand, Canada, Iceland, etc. Always dynamic and unhinged in a way that is both feral in energy and in production. Listen back to what Phrenelith, Taphos, Sulphurous, Tardus Mortem, Undergang, Septage have done in the last while (hell, listen to Ascendency’s latest EP) and you’ll see what I mean.

I digress, Chaotian's debut album is out in June and it sounds like it’s going to be a putrid pile of nebulous death metal as we’ve come to expect out of Denmark’s quiet, but venerable scene. Take notice and support!

Chaotian -  Effigies of Obsolescence (bandcamp)

Desolate Shrine - Fires of The Dying World (2022)

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Three-piece Finnish firing-squad via pummelling death metal as we've come to expect from Desolate Shrine's decade long crusade against the status-quo of recycled riffs and puny atmospherics. All we have to go by is the one song teaser via Dark Descent Records, but it's really all you need to deduce the crushing ferocity Fires of The Dying World is looking to discharge upon our feeble minds. Happy to hear some tempo changes on a death metal record again… LOOK OUT

Desolate Shrine - Fires of The Dying World (bandcamp)

Septage - Septisk Eradikasyon (2021)

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One close look at the cover of this album and you would be outta your skull to think this will be anything less than a putrid and rotting slab of death metal with a predilection for blood, fascia, tendon and offal… Only a muppet wouldn't admit the garishness an album like this imposes on the listener but sometimes in the creases of our being we are more fossil hominid than we are homo sapiens. My taste for death metal is mostly in another direction, but it's been a while since I have gone down the rabbit-hole of gore inspired Death Metal, moreover it's an appropriate follow-up to the Taphos post a few days ago as 1/3 of Septage shares a member with Taphos. 

Septage - Septisk Eradikasyon (bandcamp)

Mannveira - Vítahringur (2021)

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Iceland has earned an automatic grace with me—If I see an album under the canopy of black/death metal being put out from the windswept nation I will always direct some time and energy into listening to that thing, and you should too… They've earned it. The list of quality albums coming from that tiny island has got to be the highest per capita out of anywhere else?

I digress, musically Vítahringur is a melting pot of all those Icelandic sounds but with more poise. I see Mannveira slapped with a black metal tag everywhere, but not only is that lazy, it's not accurate. Without dipping into the overly formulaic and trite discussion of genres (and their sub-genres) its worth it (especially in this case) to acknowledge the myriad of nuance. 

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Its foundations are built mostly upon the Icelandic black metal sound of whirring and hypnotic guitar chords much like Naðra, Sinmara, Svartidauði and Misþyrming (etc.) albeit with a little more focus on the space around the chords and creating atmosphere through something more of a doom tinged approach of canyon like mid-tempo, which often features lofty guitars akin to post-metal more so than black metal. A standout difference to me is in the vocal mix, which favours a much bulkier sound than its counterparts, barely if ever dipping into anything of a shrill like scream that's become omnipotent in Icelandic black metal. Before I get to verbose I'll just say that Mannveira have achieved something dense and great here, as always, worth your time and energy!

Mannveira - Vítahringur (bandcamp)

Bestia Arcana - Holókauston (2017)

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Holókauston is an album I have been chewing through since it came out; Slowly wading through its musical fat and gristle, letting the innocuous flavours and the potent decadent flourishes rest on my pallet before swallowing. You would be remiss (and wrong) to chalk this album up as black/death metal and just walk away as if this simple categorical summation is adequate. It's not.

It's a raging torrent of death metal at its foundation. A deluge of war-like drums poke and pound nefariously while the whirr of guitars waft around a cavernous atmosphere in a dizzying haze, gaining in traction, increasing in heft, bubbling, frothing, foaming over, spilling over its iron cusp and pouring out onto the earth. Its core tethered to the lilt of black metal, cold and unrelenting. It sounds like communicating beasts, invoking spells and inciting incantations; summoning tremors, hale, lighting, fire and the 17 plagues of babel. Your hope and whimsy left in desiccated heaps of dust and your wellbeing not so well. Malign in your bones and total ennui in your veins.

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The paragraph above is seemingly hyperbolic and self-masturbatory. A lot of words, with little meaning… Yeah maybe, but one thing is certain, Bestia Arcana released one of the better metal albums last year and it went way under everyones radar. Everyone fucked up.

One of the best albums released in 2017, period.

Bestia Arcana - Holókauston (bandcamp)

Ritual Necromancy - Disinterred Horror (2018)

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Yeah dude, Ritual Necromancy have finally released a follow up to their 2012 release Oath of The  Abyss, which was a no gimmick, methodical pummelling in form of glacially paced death metal. Disinterred Horror is a lot of the same, which in this sense is a good thing - death metal is constantly being digested, regurgitated and spewed out with flourishes of new ideas and gimmickry, and that's all well and good but sometimes you want an immovable force that is direct in its approach - Ritual Necromancy have succeeded in every facet of this on this record; suffocatingly dense death metal that tends to stew in its own fecal debris, sloshing around like molasses in a wave pool, forming crests that only barrel over once the putrid gestation process has reached its frothing point.

This, of course, is just an overly convoluted and cryptic way of saying it's heavier than a dead dog. I'm pleasantly reminded of Encoffination, Disma and Sonne Adam. Enjoy it you fuckin' slugs.

Disinterred Horror (bandcamp)

Maveth & Embrace of Thorns - A Plague Through The Heavens [split] (2014)

I was initially going to challenge myself by reviewing Noia's new album Obstinate Sacrifice while trying not to talk about how much it sounds like a cleaned up version of Venom playing Nuclear Assault songs or how the lyrics should be swapped out for pseudo-human grunts, belches, growls and farts… But I decided against it because I'm already going to be reviewing Midnight's No Mercy For Mayhem for favorite Icelandic human Birkir and his blog Halifax Collect later this week.

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Instead, I give you filth. I give you death. I give to you a split that is actually worth checking out, A Plague Through The Heavens released by Dark Descent Records. Two bands that aren't new to the game, Maveth from Finland and Embrace of Thorns from Greece band together to bludgeon you senseless with their dragged through the muck and fecal decay of the sewers take on black/death metal. I'm sure this is best listened to in the dark, sitting in a pentagram drawn with goats semen but I'm sitting on a park bench withe the sun beaming down on my fucking forehead, and it's still pretty sweet man.

  

A Plague Through The Heavens (Buy + bandcamp)