Uncoffined - Ceremonies of Morbidity

Artist: Uncoffined
Release Title: Ceremonies of Morbidity
Year: 2016
Label: Memento Mori
Genre: Doom/Death Metal
Tracklisting:
1. The Horrors of Highgate
2. Plague of the Uncoffined
3. Ceremonies of Morbidity
4. Ill Omens of Death and Disease
5. Awakened from their Dormant Slumber

Becoming one of the country’s finest exports, UK-based doom/death metallers Uncoffined have taken the dark and depraved work found in their previous work into a further extreme by drawing even more on the creeping, crawling atmosphere into higher degrees here. With a three-year gap between releases, the group prepares it’s sophomore release October 24, 2016 on Memento Mori.

For the most part here this one plays with the predominantly doom-laced part of their sound for a rather chilling aspect of music that continually churns and oozes with the scalding atmosphere prevalent in that style. The utterly slow, crushing riffing spends an ornate amount of time here readily working through a never-ending series of vile, oppressive rhythms full of these straightforward efforts that take these rhythms into dark passages with the imagery present. As the riffing containing these passages spells out the dark, cryptic atmosphere here with the sound clips edited into here which complement those deep, churning patterns and agonizingly slow, drawn-out rhythms so well by keeping the same consistent atmosphere throughout here. Despite the quality and consistency of the rhythms and atmosphere throughout here, there’s a minor flaw throughout here in that this one doesn’t really offer up much variety or really strike very many creative endeavors throughout here. With the album for the most part incredibly consistent and straightforward in doling out the dark, cryptic graveyard-spawned rhythms here, this one seems to go for these singular style of rhythms here for the entirety of the record so it’s quite easy to lose yourself in the album quite easily with it replaying that here and it creates quite a prolonged, drawn-out feeling here which is enhanced by the extreme length of the songs themselves, but that isn’t all too big of a deal overall here.

While there’s times where it does feel it’s length, especially due to the repetitiveness of the whole affair, the strong darkened atmospheric vibes and utterly pummeling work throughout this one is much more impressive and readily makes this quite an appealing effort for any doom/death fan or horror-centric extreme metal fan.

Score: 90/100

Does it sound good? Order it from here:
https://www.discogs.com/Uncoffined-Ceremonies-Of-Morbidity/release/9258381

Necroven - Primordial Subjugation

Artist: Necroven
Release Title: Primordial Subjugation
Year: 2016
Label: Memento Mori
Genre: Retro Death Metal
Tracklisting:
1. Sacrificial Deliverance
2. The Pyre Cycle (Burn in Solitude)
3. Primordial Subjugation
4. The Ethereal
5. Esoteric Entropy (Gateway to the End)
6. Martyrs of Repentance
7. Serpents Crawl Stealthy

Continuing to honor their influences, Spanish death metallers Necroven have brought out a series of blistering, seething styles of death metal brought about by their unrelenting rage into a series of dark, festering cryptic music. Taking a four-year gap from their last full-length album, and only a two-year gap from their last overall release that sees mastermind J.R. joined by full-time bassist F.C,, the groups’ second full-length album was released October 24, 2016 on Memento Mori.

Almost immediately this here is basically centered around the idea of utilizing the old-school manner of attack throughout with plenty of explicitly enjoyable rhythms due to this. Firing off plenty of razor-sharp and churning old-school rhythms throughout here with a violent intensity, the main approach here with the riff-work is that semblance of stylized churning patterns that offer up plenty of strong sprawling patterns throughout here which come together with the series of darkened riffing to create a tight, nearly blackened atmosphere that’s wholly impressive and damaging when the band unleashes the full force of this assault. When coupled with the sparkling tremolo leads over the top this becomes all the more closely associated with the grand dark atmospherics and generates the kind of truly blistering setting for the band to really explore that to the fullest, yet it also highlights the first of the album’s few, barely negligible flaws. The main issue here is the fact that there’s just not a whole lot of opportunity for the band to readily explore many other elements here with the bands’ mostly straightforward approach running throughout the tracks not allowing it to really go anywhere else. This here is so strictly a single-minded assault of old-school influenced death metal that it doesn’t do anything really different here in the rhythms which are so steadfast in their determination to homage that style that it ends up dragging out the songs a little too long that, incidentally, is the other minor issue here in that there’s little reason for the songs here to be this long other than cover for the shorter run-time and especially running in the strict old-school manner as it does here. Still, these here are all that really crops up about the album.

While there’s not a great deal of innovation or variety here with the band blasting through their old-school worship in a relatively straightforward manner, the majority of this album works with a sense of dark, intense atmosphere that should make this wholly appealing to old-school fanatics or fans of this style of revivalist death metal.

Score: 84/100

Does it sound good? Order it from here:
https://www.discogs.com/Necroven-Primordial-Subjugation/release/9258361

Gorgosaur - Lurking Among Corpses

Artist: Gorgosaur
Release Title: Lurking Among Corpses
Year: 2016
Label: Memento Mori
Genre: Swedish Death Metal
Tracklisting:
1. Basement Funeral Hymn
2. Terror Incarnate
3. In Darkness They Come Crawling
4. Body Snatchers
5. Pyromaniac Narrations
6. Lurking Among Corpses
7. Gashes and Demise
8. The Antropophagus
9. Burial of Rats
10. Death Is Psychosomatic

Emerging from the depths of the underground, Swedish death metallers Gorgosaur showcase their love for the old-school with their selected name from an actual creature of the earth’s history. This is more than appropriate on display in their first full-length album, which was released April 25, 2016 on Memento Mori, as this impressive beast rumbles and strikes like a true dinosaurian attack.

From the outset, this here is given the classic Swedish death metal charge that appears so fervently in the country’s acts, and the inclusion of the classic chainsaw-churning groove litters the album from start to finish. This display of these traditional riffing and frantic full-throttle rhythms that allows them to move forward at the typical tempos and still generate the kind of effective atmosphere typically associated here. This attack lets it to delve deep into the rather frantic display of attacks from the old-school wave where the charging riffing and dynamic drumming were all at the forefront of the style found there, and it brings this out in raw form here. The problem here is that the album is indeed too raw for it’s own good, with the short, blitzkrieg-style found here not really allowing it the chance to really get a much more distinctive rise out of these tracks. They’re just so familiar and tend to run through so many familiar elements that it just reads as yet another old-school Swedish death metal band paying homage to the greats of the past. Granted, a lot of that is perhaps due to the fact that this one just doesn’t really have any kind of time to get this done with the brief track lengths with only a few of these songs breaking the three-minute mark so it’s opportunities to really change that up as the simplicity of the riff-work keeps this so straightforward and to-the-point it doesn’t get to really do much about it. Otherwise, there’s a lot to like overall about this one.

While running into yet another common problem found in so many of these Swedish death metal projects of not being inherently original about itself, there’s still a good deal amount of positives found here to make this a select choice for anyone even remotely appreciative of that particular scene or just old-school death metal in general.

Score: 76/100

Does it sound good? Order it from here:
https://gorgosaur.bandcamp.com/releases