Review Summary: Primitive ferocity.
Death metal outfit Ascended Dead left a good aftertaste as a newcomer band back in 2014 with their first EP “Arcane Malevolence”, but it wasn’t until 2017 and their debut full length “Abhorrent Manifestation” that a bigger impact was achieved. That album contained evident brutality but also stayed in the shadow of its influences a bit, alienating only the part of the audience that goes hard on originality when discovering new releases. In other words, old school death metal freaks most likely had a blast with it in their basements.
Not much has changed 6 years later with the follow-up album “Evenfall of the Apocalypse”, musically or aesthetically. Much like thrashers Enforced, Ascended Dead opt for colorless artwork that contains a lot less than 50 shades of gray, but taking it a step further with a completely scrambled image that depicts something only if someone tells you what it is. Its murky, filthy production stands in opposition to a number of other releases in the old school death metal revival scene that has been on the rise the last decade, and if you’re not paying attention, you may as well only listen to a homogeneous layer of cacophony instead of riffs, drums and vocals.
However, closer inspection reveals that the album has a series of potent characteristics that we need in death metal, yet I don’t know if we deserve. Compositions are chopped up in pieces and glued back together through maniacal restructuring, guitar lines follow non-linear, frenetic patterns while catapulting one gargantuan riff after the other, always at fast tempos and in the finest kind of ugliness. Moreover, solos are not spammed around every corner, they are used in moderation and all the sections that include them are placed and executed perfectly. Especially memorable for these reasons are the tracks “Ungodly Death” and “Nexus of the Black Flame” from the first half of the record.
Effort is required to keep up with the chaotic, scourging songs in “Evenfall of the Apocalypse”, which does not take a break except for a short moment with an acoustic guitar section on the 9th track “Passage to Eternity”. It’s a recurring ploy by the band that was repeated in their debut as well so who am I to speak, but the built up turbulent intensity of the album slightly dissipated for me there. Really, if you’re going for such rough heaviness, no diversions are needed. Vocals consist of the cavernous growls that naturally go along this kind of material, and while I didn’t fully enjoy some semi-howling screaming that can be heard here and there, I guess it still is a recognizable point that could separate the band's singer from the norm.
This is a healthy dose of unfiltered, straightforward and bombastic extremity, from people who play death metal with the mindset that it is a synonym to, as real as possible, violence. Put Morbid Angel and Incantation in a blender, with a flavor of standard caveman death metal, an ounce of Portal’s riff insanity, and the resulting disgorgement might be Ascended Dead’s “Evenfall of the Apocalypse”. As a cherry on top of this malevolence, a King Diamond type scream on the album’s speediest track, “Visceral Strike”. Don’t listen to this if you like happy things, sunny days, modernity or the world.
