Review Summary: Crosses? They don't even exist here.
It has been a long time since a dense / atmospheric death metal band got me hooked; Encoffination might but they bored me after the 5th listen, Disma was good but their sound became monotonous after a couple of spins. Corpsessed comes from the delta area of Järvenpää; in this demo I can completely assure you that they composed some of the most brutal and blasphemous music of 2012. This group replicates a horrendous atmosphere similar and almost influenced by Gorguts seminal release
Obscura however; their technical department is akin to their Finnish death metal scene.
Obscura is an album that had a huge impact in the death metal genre but when it comes to influence, its dark sounds are easily overlooked; However, there are still a couple of bands rising, carrying the torch
Obscura gave to them. Most of this bands share a similar sound and song-structure pattern, they focus on very down-tuned guitars to project a very dense, doomed atmosphere; usually using off-tempo drumming mixed with casual blast beats, and of course…Very guttural vocals that sound closer to a living, breathing & speaking Sunn O))) bass amp than a human being. Corpsessed joins the wave of bands like Ulcerate, Portal, Antideluvian, Diocletian and Father Befouled embracing a dark, wicked and suffocated atmosphere.
This demo compromises of two tracks that completely invert the cross, world and universe down and drags them into the pits of hell. “Demoniacal Subjugation” completely kills it, the song is opened by a sound clip (a growing characteristic of the subgenre), some sort of creepy ambience stalks you for brief seconds until the guitars enter, they walk a very groovy staircase; when they reach the second floor though, riffs start slaughtering zombies with an axe grinding SDM handicap. After an already superb brutal vicious assault you could easily ask yourself “can this get better”, incredibly.. It does, some moments later when the chainsaw guitar parts are transcended you’re slaughtered by a more evil sounding passage that is both aesthetically heavy and more or less melodic, it is a doom-ier approach though; way more down-tuned than the first section. One thing to note is that they take the Finnish masters, Rippikoulu, as a fantastic influence, changing between sludgy riffs and chainsaw guitar parts and interconnecting them with blast beaten middle sections. Anyways, It saddens me that the number of death metal acts taking notes from a monolith like
Musta Seremonia is so low, at least the Swedish and Finnish bands care, the latter specially (SDM was basically defined by Carnage’s
Dark Recollections / Dismember’s
Like An Ever Flowing Stream and Entombed‘s
Left Hand Path). Now getting back at “Demoniacal Subjugation“, Corpsessed slowly shuts the door and gets back to their usual chainsaw guitar greatness and seconds later the song comes to an end.
The second track “Of Desolation” is darker, the songwriting is way more developed or “expanded”, using only five minutes Corpsessed takes you on a journey through raining blood, corpses falling from the sky and undead creatures eating human brains. The Rippikoulu influence here is very obvious, “Of Desolation“ is sludgy and focuses more on doom than its ripping predecessor did. This band is getting a good fan base for all the right reasons, their music is great, and because they manage to check all the blank boxes many blackened death metal bands leave behind. Another surprise to be found (besides the music) is that after the band formed from the remaining ashes of Skullfúcker, their then former bassplayer Mikko Mäkelä disappeared on unknown circumstances, hopefully he was replaced later in 2009 by Mikko Pöllä of Azure. From then they started “(de)composing what would eventually become this rotten demo“ the band claims. This demo does about everything right, I encourage you to check it out, Corpsessed does not simply plays death metal, they use death metal as a medium to express their blasphemous ideals, and also because rather than making an unlistenable ritual they keep things interesting and fun all the time; Headbang on m/.
