Category Archives: Doom/Death Metal

Morbid Gods “Rotting Prophecies” 7″, Temple Of Abomination 2011

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Oggi il Dottor Marciume ascolta: Morbid Gods “Rotting Prophecies” 7″, insubstantial Death Doom from US, Temple Of Abomination 2011

Punk crusties turned to OSDM sometimes score great bands like Black Blood Invocation and sometimes they just shoot in the flock to catch some easy prey with debatable results. I still have no idea why Blood Harvest created this sub label for just a handful of releases as I can’t exactly catch what’s the conceptual difference between the two entities but nevertheless this 7″ has been released on this small imprint called Temple Of Abomination. I picked up this 7″ totally convinced it was some repress of old Altar (swe) stuff (check the logo!) until I was already handing money for it at the record stand. I told myself hey, the logo is cool the art is cool, the worst that could happen would have been just another regular doomy Death Metal item to add to the EP crates in the Crypt of Rot. And so it turned out to be – generic songs with 3 tempo changes of routine death doom that could actually have been recorded in 1991. It sounds like a mix of demo era Profanatica and Incantation BUT played by someone who listened to the songs just once. I am not complaining too much as there is nothing wrong besides being totally soulless and without any quality of note, I personally like the idea of a recording being minimalistic and unpretentious yet there is really very little meat to chew here.

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ASCENDED (Fin): “The Art Of Necromancy” demo Cd-r 2008 s/p

There was a time, in the first part of the nineties, when I was totally obsessed with Finnish Death + Black Metal. Of course Sweden had THE scene, but bands like Purtenance, Archgoat, Demilich, Xysma or Depravity (and I can go on forever) had that special, unearthly feel that just took the most extreme genres and made each one of them even colder and darker. Finland just meant “sickness” in its most undiluted form, blacker Black Metal and darker Death Metal. Time went on and basically every one of these bands either disbanded or turned into some shitty rockn’roll a la Lubricant. Time to forget about Finland for a while… but like the Swedish scene has been resurrected, so seem the Finnish one has its good share of new talent to exhume, and this Ascended is really among the best ones I heard in a long, long time. Like for other old demos on the blogzine, Ascended actually recorded more stuff after this demo, but having been mostly an inactive couch potato for more than 5 years it was a great surprise for me to hear we have still great death/doom being concocted among the cold swamps of Fennoscandia. This excellent demo Cd-r was handnumbered to 100 copies but mine has no number so I guess is part of a second batch. The packaging is bare as it should be with classical lineart on the cover and very simple inlay (lyrics, general infos and so on).

The thing I love more about this demo is the sound of the drums. They reverberates like a gong, filling the whole soundwave with a distant, omnipresent, evocative vibe. Every beat seems to raise the atmosphere to the next level of dismal oblivion. The band is VERY different, but I can find some common feel with, early Eucharist or Necros Christos on the slower, more abstract, detached  moments.  Ascended is however not an entirely Death Metal band and there are no melodies of sort in their sound. I think they can arguably be defined as Death Metal with some good Doom/Death influences, but I don’t think they can be rated as a strictly Death/Doom band either. They are grinding slow at times, and almost obsessive in dragging riffs forever in an hypnotic way, but I will not use any other term but good, solid Death Metal. The vocals are deep and monumental, just like the music. This demo is a cathedral of sound, with an obscure halo hovering over it.

Thanks Finland for still being present.