Phrenelith – Desolate Endscape

Phrenelith
Desolate Endscape – 2017

Remember when the Internet went crazy for Pissgrave – Suicide Euphoria (Profound Lore Records) back in 2015 ? It's time for a new riot straight from the abyss, and the demon's name is Phrenelith.

Born in 2013 in Copenhagen, Phrenelith started their career out with a split with Spectral Voice (Iron Bonehead, 2016), followed shortly by an EP (Chimaerian Offspring – Extremely Rotten Productions, 2017) and a masterpiece of an album, Desolate Endscape (Dark Descent Records, 2017).

Desolate Endscape is the kind of album that reminds me why I like death metal – it's inherently primal, evil and intimidating. This record is a massive slab of death metal, dense and heavy and being thrown at your face. The fact that there's zero flourish or unnecessary technicality brings Phrenelith to the forefront of the cavemanesque caverncore scene that's been simmering for the past decade. The entire album drips with ichor, and while the production is a key element, the riffs are the personality of Desolate Endscape.

David Torturdød and S.D, guitarists extraordinaire, have no shame in recording riffs that I'd have thrown away as basic or unoriginal – and then execute them with palpable hate and intensity. Leads aren't really a thing here, and despite the rare tremolo-picked melodies spicing up the songs, most of it is sludgy power chords vomited through high gain and chopped up by palm muting.

Most of the death metal tropes are present – Desolate Endscape isn't reinventing the genre, and there are no surprises for anyone remotely familiar with the genre. And yet the ennui that usually follows is replaced by mountains of testosterone and energetic headbanging – Phrenelith need no exotic scales or sweep picking to get things going.

The vocal performance is excellent, and the tonal monotony plays right into the droning, monolithic aesthetic Phrenelith has cultivated. The guttural timbre of both singers, as well as their poor pronunciation invoke images of dank, rotting marshes teeming with dangerous and disgusting wildlife. While it isn't difficult to write vocal lines in death metal, Phrenelith really did put the emphasis where it needed to be, as well as gave great support to the more sluggish riffs.

Desolate Endscape is more than the sum of its parts – and in the years to come I'm positive it'll become a cult classic.

Giuseppe Fitzsimmons

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