Phrenelith
Desolate Endscape – 2017
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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