The old school DM revival goes on to abuse my weary ears week after week with endless trivial releases (shouldn’t have become a reviewer probably). By now surely everyone has figured out how to play those three notes for successful Demigod/Incantation worship. For the sakes of this review I’ll attempt to give a shit about this revivalist movement.
Corpsessed’s a name I’ve heard around quite a bit lately, let’s check them out then. One can surely never get tired of high quality old school death metal.
As suspected Demigod and Incantation influences are at large here. Demilich worship is also apparent. Old Swedish stuff too. ‘Crypt Infester’ kicks off powerfully, but as with almost all the songs some riffs you really wonder what they were thinking (some of those chuggy riffs are dreadful!!!). On the other hand, the atmosphere’s right, the production’s massive yet dark, but what it lacks is catchiness as it definitely doesn’t stand out from the crowd at this time when competition in the field of filthy old school death metal is as harsh as now. Leads are flawless as we’ve gotten used to, but never step out of the mould of the obvious. Some riffs are just 1-1 rip-off (Altar of Worms opener – come on guys!). Song-writing needs a lot of work and the more I listen to this the more I want to listen to the bands that influenced this and did it better decades ago.
Despite the very harsh words above, I do actually quite like this stuff! Corpsessed have managed to create a strong piece old school death metal with signs of great things to come. But lots of more work has to go in here for this stuff to make an impact (at least on this cunt-reviewer). I would actually go as far as recommending this to fans of this genre!
… Maybe I’m just pissed off with the London riots and letting that affect my judgement (everything’s boarded up so I had to walk almost ten minutes for a 6-pack of Lech). Great. (By the time I’m finishing this off I’m also severely jetlagged.)
The EP comes with some great art with Alexander “Bad News” Brown. Very nice stuff, probably not his best, but definitely makes this release stand out more than it would otherwise.
… and, oh yeah, the whole thing kicks off with an awesome intro… wish the whole thing was just an awesome intro.
Next up’s Gorephilia then…
Another Finnish release by US’s Dark Descent Records… an album called ‘Ascend of Chaos’ (up ‘n down). Artwork by Roni Arling of Lie In Ruins (a man who undoubtedly knows how to play this sort’a noise), gives me hope here. The issue of originality is ever-present when reviewing material. It is also something that has to be filtered out completely with Gorephilia. There’s none, so let’s forget about that aspect. Nothing here dares to take even a step out of that above-mentioned mould. Within the old school death metal spectrum, however, they do things extremely well. Just like their label-buddies Corpsessed really, except not quite as good (despite being more experienced). Similar things can be criticised and praised, so as I’ve been asked to write this as a joint-review, I won’t be repeating myself (just see above); same strengths and weaknesses, same lackings and the same vision.
Anyhow, we have two extremely solid old school DM releases here. Exactly what you’d expect from 2011. Fans of above-mentioned influences are likely to really dig this and I recommend it to all fans of the genre. These bands definitely keep the high level of the revival movement up… but slowly but surely more is needed!
http://www.gorephilia.com
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Corpsessed/137045663007613?ref=ts
Miika Virtanen
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