Review Summary: ALIEN VORTEX OV RIFFS
"Cosmic" death metal has become a very popular style over the past decade or so. Bands like Blood Incantation and Artificial Brain are the main frontrunners of this trend, blending sci-fi themes and extraterrestrial imagery with otherworldy riffs and extremely guttural vocals. In reality, American band Timeghoul were the ones that pioneered the sound in the early 90s, but they never really got going, only releasing 2 demo tapes before disbanding. Fathomless Ritual is a relatively new death metal band from Canada and they're staking their claim as the next best thing in the death metal scene with their debut album
Hymns for the Lesser Gods.
The main takeaway that I took from this album is that being a copycat band isn't always a bad thing.
Hymns for the Lesser Gods is basically the long lost brother of Demilich's
Nespithe. From everything to the way the riffs are arranged to the "burping" vocals to the murky abyssal production, its basically the exact same sound to the point where you probably couldn't tell the difference if you were played songs from each album back to back.
Yes I know all of that doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement of Fathomless Ritual, but I mean it in a complimentary way. As mentioned earlier, the repugnant production is absolutely perfect for this kind of death metal. The riffs are chunky and powerful, blasting you to smithereens with their subtle melodies, technical prowess and solar spacey atmospheric effects. The drumming is varied and not stagnant in any way, as you sometimes find on death metal albums. Sure there's plenty of blast beats but the double bass work in particular is a standout. Even the bass is audible throughout the duration, humming along rhythmically and hynotically. The vocals are a direct Demilich ripoff, sounding as if Belial had acid indigestion and decided to record himself hacking up whatever flesh he consumed that afternoon.
We can all sit here and bitch and moan about
Hymns for the Lesser Gods being a complete plagiarism of
Nespithe. We could say Fathomless Ritual lack any creativity whatsoever and chuck them into the trash bin. Or my friends, we can choose to get absolutely pummelled by the sea of cosmic riffage that is coming at us from all angles. Just because a band pretty much steals another band's ideas/sound doesn't mean that it's any less enjoyable. If you look at it as it's own entity (as everyone damn well should), you're going to find a groovy and extremely fun death metal album.
Hymns for the Lesser Gods will have you ready to go search Mars for another life form. Let the riffs from beyond the cosmos consume you my friends.
