As crimson-soaked leaves rustle heavily in a cold wind, thousands of eyes peer out from a marred sky. A river of blood travels into the horizon towards a hazy castle in the distance. What warrior lay here in the shadow of a mangled tree, what stories spew from their maw?
After various singles, EPs and splits — Walpole, Mass-based Ancient Death arrive with Ego Dissolution—their first full length and debut on Profound Lore Records. If the art was to suggest a locale in the cosmic traverse of the Death Metal expanse, it would probably float somewhere between Scott Burns’ Morrisound couch and the Isthmus of Karelia, hopping a ride atop a painted raven seen through the eyes of Kristian Wåhlin’s Necrolord ghost.
Beyond the morbid angles and amorphous lakes pouring forth into the Neponset River, there are dimensions to these planes that go far and wide outside the purview of what you’d expect from the Trey’s and Esa’s.
“Breathe - Transcend (Into the Glowing Streams of Forever)” indeed passes through a poeticism rarely found in a genre ripe with marrowless language filled with “dark eyes and shadows grim”.
As the breath fades into infinity / The Earth regains its fragment of heart / Gathering memories and journeys entwined / Becoming one as before
The track opens with something akin to Burn My Eyes in an atmospheric, nearly Industrial-sized Sludge-filled blender, twisting the intestine into a Masvidal break that dismounts into Jasmine Alexander’s deceptive siren call, only to twist again into the stratosphere. The composition recalls something flickering on a tube television set in the prime of Loud on Much Music. The colors are vibrant yet carry a tome of buried myths and (profound) lore galore. The twin guitar attack does not fall into Maidenesque trappings but relies on a reductive atmospheric cinema palette, striking down the brush sparingly on the canvas for maximum effect in the instrumental “Journey to the Inner Soul” that follows.
Classic memes of unknown Finnish demos unearthed only to lead to heartbreak are the antithesis here. This is a measured work with the right touches of pomegranate sauce and sesame; the notes are precise and heartfelt and pack a punch directly to the incisors as you glide into star-filled orbit.
As a close friend pointed out “…I really respect a Death Metal band that’s like ‘every riff is certified’”. No lies detected. Every second here is a confident investment in the part that precedes and the part that follows. “Atmosphere AND beautiful leadwork”. These types of records are for communal listening, for the stage, for a chorus of voices proclaiming “Streams of grief! Echoing our distant past!”.
Without overblown clichés and banal dissections of a “scene” that may feel like a reclusive fox chasing its own tail at times, one can lay claim that the destiny of whatever amalgam it flourishes into or succumbs to is a deep well with a shimmering illumination.
Let the judgments of others / Leave your mind / And fill your heart with / Vessels of light
Life Metal, not Death Metal.
