Review Summary: Entropic force corroding the core.
There has been considerable activity in the Danish extreme metal underground the last 15 years or so, and one of the most celebrated albums that culminated from the Scandinavian wonderland was Phrenelith’s vicious debut “Desolate Endscape” in 2017. While that record exhaled with the rotted, gnarled breaths of old school abyssal death metal, the band refined its primordial murk by incorporating a few elements of doom / death with the follow-up “Chimaera” four years later, another massive album that was fueled by the same pure incentives and displayed equivalent feral aggression. Since Phrenelith have been held in high regard for their evident visceral talent, the standards for their next steps have been equally high, but thankfully, there is no room for doubt or disappointment with their third full-length, “Ashen Womb”.
It feels like the band keeps evolving with every new work without abandoning their subterranean roots; instead, they get more and more comfortable establishing and navigating the darkness. “Ashen Womb” presents dense, cavernous death metal that was shaped in accordance with the archaic Immolation / Morbid Angel formulas, then melded with an otherworldly Incantation-esque malevolence while slightly nodding to their own already exercised doom / death approach, similar to more recent bands like Krypts. As the aforementioned names already suggest, there’s a writhing, suffocating atmosphere that oozes from every pore of this beast, reinforced by the sharpened clarity of the production. As impressive as the sound is though, the greatest weapon of the album is, in my opinion, the crushing nature of the compositions themselves and especially the brutally exquisite guitar work.
After the short intro “Noemata”, the listener is instantly greeted with the menacing, cacophonous death metal rage that characterizes Phrenelith, as heard in both the first two tracks “Astral Larvae” and “A Husk Wrung Dry”. Fast-paced and sonically devastating, they set the tone of unrest that permeates the whole album, which rattles like a casket lid straining against its hinges. Subtle, exploratory intentions can be discovered in the more epic last part of “Lithopaedion” or the dark ambient / clean guitar sections at the start and end of “Nebulae” respectively, yet the core intensity is never truly reduced at any point. Even more spectacular is the succeeding sequence from “Stagnated Blood” to “Chrysopoiea”, also featuring continuous high-level death metal pummeling that makes it difficult to pinpoint a highlight among highlights.
While the band never really loosens its grip when it comes to the album’s atmosphere, such straightforward and competent death metal riffing immediately catches the attention, having a somewhat similar effect on me like when I listened to Ascended Dead’s “Evenfall of the Apocalypse” in 2023, e.g. “Chrysopoeia” could definitely fit in that record as well. “Ashen Womb” closes with a spacious, dominating ten-minute long piece that allows the band to examine eerie melodies and tempo shifts more freely, fitting well as a final track for the album. I wouldn’t mind if this self-titled track were just slightly less drawn out, but the whole of the record is, in the end, a maelstrom of exhilarating fury.
To my ears, the flow here is the most organic and focused of their discography so far, compared to both their previous full length works, which also helps a lot in leaving a positive aftertaste once the listening session is done. The album’s tracks have for the most part been created with methodical precision, they score very high on memorability with hardly any filler moments, as not even the intro or interlude “Sphageion” (Greek for “slaughterhouse”) should be skipped. What Phrenelith offer is a death metal masterstroke that incorporates the best elements of their back catalog, thriving on tension-building heaviness and an intimidating atmosphere that only first-rate death metal albums of that kind can achieve. Let the rot take hold.
