Just for a change Arkhum’s album starts with an intro that offers little in the way of ingenuity or reasons for its inclusion as it quickly cuts off to reveal some standard brutal death metal but with deep vocals on “Grief Urchin”. The gurgling vocal belching is predictable as the immediate dominating factor on this album is the thin sound and lack of bass despite the hyper speed drumming. The frenetic nature of “Obsolescent Husk” is similar to a band like Cattle Decapitation as the band unleash a flurry of guitar hooks and leads within the main structure of the song.
“Obviated Geocentrism” begins with a George Clooney film sample, though I didn’t recognise the excerpt unfortunately (possibly one of the Ocean films) as this song veers into warlike death metal though not as spiteful or manic as say a band like Revenge as the song takes on some black like characteristics. The pleasantly titled “Bloodgutter Encircling” has a very mild start considering its title as by now my ears have attuned to the weak bass by picking it out of the mix when the double bass stops for a breather. The massive drop in pace adds some black style keys to the fold and even some piano which was quite surprising during the fade out.
A spacey one minute segue interrupts the rampage and serves as a decent intro to “Nilpulse”, a chaotic and bedlam song with sporadic blasts and tons of double kick groove. There are some Morbid Angel moments during this album but not enough to say it is totally influenced by them as the closing track “Expendable Biomass” would attribute to. After a couple of listens I’m not convinced by the bands style of production and even listening to this with the bass cranked up as far as possible it lacks density which is always going to make me frown as I expect ALL death metal to be laden with enough bass to set off a seismic tremor in my house.
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