Review Summary: Cinematic and vicious death metal
Cosmic putrefaction is a One Man Band Signed To I Voidhanger Records (This really should be its own subgenre by now). But while most of these one man bands tend to produce black metal, Cosmic Putrefaction's Gabriele Gramaglia makes burly death metal in the VEIN of Blood Incantation
Did you like the last Blood Incantation album? Statistically speaking yeah you did because everyone (me included) and their mom (mine included) put it in their top ten last year. I'm sure it must be infuriating for Gabriel to take something he made with love and care and compare it to something he might not consider an influence but I did it anyway. Because I am a professional.
And to be fair the bands are not really all that similar. There is some general overlap but but the music of Cosmic Putrefaction is not so all over the place. I am talking more about a general atmosphere. When I listen to them with closed eyes I picture black holes tearing each other apart, and nasty things happening on the Nostromo and the USG Ishimura.
This is some ugly, fast paced deathmetal that sounds like a mountain crushing a village full of orphans. The writing here is top notch. The first song Between Awe and Fear upon the Burst of the Ominous Star (yes of course we have long and pretentious titles it comes with the territorry) switches effortlesly between lightning fast tremolos, Gorguts style atonal weirdness and a super chunky breakdown with a wailing solo on top that is guaranteed to make you want to smash someone's teeth in. The vocals are earthshakingly low and the instrumental work is surprisingly technical. And the fact that one guy played all of it just makes it that much more awesome.
So if this would be all the album has to offer I would already be satisfied. Some burly death metal with great writing and instantly memorable riffs? I'm all in.
But what really sets this album apart is the atmosphere. Things are relatively straightforward on the first 3 tracks, but at the end of The Glooming Murk of His Telluric Shrieks we get a chilling ambient section with some gentle acoustic plucking that wouldnt be out of place on the score of diablo 2. From that point on all of the songs have something extra going for them that gives the music an added dimension. A dimension most likely inhabited by lizard people.
The track The Arcane Soothsayer Carefully Sculpted His Demise has an ice cold blackened section on it, accentuated by an ambient passage that flows nicely into the string section at the beginning of Utterance of the Fall of Man. The strings play a nice little melody before being absolutely obliterated by the nastiest, murkiest, slowest riff on the whole album. You know it's coming but because it is so well executed it's just satisfying.
The only bad thing I can say of this album is that it's too short at 34 minutes. It's really easy to listen to it again, not just because of the short runtime but because it's so fun. It has enough variety going on to keep your attention but not too much to be ALIENATING.
If you like your death metal fast, cavernous and oozing atmosphere then this is just what the doctor ordered. Quite simply this is one of the best death metal albums this year
