Oggi il Dottor Marciume ascolta: Hostis Humani Generis “Asphyxiation In Blood” tape, Death Metal from Finland, 2017 Unholy Domain
I had to listen to this tape over and over before assembling a reasonable string of thoughts into a review, and that’s because while the band is so primitive in songwriting every member is a 20+ year veteran on the scene and I had to clearly envision why they decided to go this minimal. Many things on this recording work. For a start, the recording has a weird ambience, typical of earlier finnish recordings of bands like Belial or Unholy (quite different stuff, but just to give an idea), that music that was not yet defined as either Black or Death or whatever, just grim and painful. One riff: much feel. And the vocals are amazing too, hellish and evil. Yet while I think I got their point I am not able to get too hooked, I love this stuff in general but when things get this simplified I believe one riff, just one great riff is enough to change the game, but then I cannot hear a single great riff in there. Huge potential and yet hitherto unexplored.
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.
