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ASHEN TOMB
Ecstatic Death Reign

Everlasting Spew (2024)
Rating: 6.5/10

Another grisly death metal debut drops within the fields of mulch, and this time it’s from Finnish act Ashen Tomb. Two years after a reasonable self-titled EP, this debut full-length length comfortably dredges the lake of the genre and emerges with plenty of Bolt Thrower, Dismember, Dead Congregation etc. under its fingernails.

Cemented firmly in the early 90s death metal compost heap, Ecstatic Death Reign is less concise and a touch more generic than the EP. Familiar riffage blasts squirm in tandem with Immolation styled gushes of ghastly grit as the Helsinki-based combo delivers several harsh brain beatings.

As with a lot of this stuff, the novelty wears off around the midway stage due to sameness in spite of the band’s ability to craft lethal, hurried rhythms which gnash with ferocity. I do prefer some of the gloomier trudges, especially the opening slog of ‘Catharsis Through Torture’ which has an Immolation whiff, and there’s some serious Dismember grinding with the latter stages of ‘Cave Of Staring Eyes’, but throughout the duration of this album it just sounds like forces all trying to compete with one another.

The midway stage is clogged and struggles to hold my attention in spite of the deluge on ‘Anamorphosis’ and the hilariously titled ‘Ancient Tombs Sealed With Dead Tongues To Preserve The Hidden One Slumbering In The Bowels Of The Earth (Mummified In Cavernous Darkness)’. It’s all solid stuff, although I’m not sure there’s enough here to enable Ashen Tomb to stand out from the guttural crowd, but I do like the Dismember styled dynamics of the title track. It comes soaked in gloomy vapour and drizzled with a melancholic solo that wafts through the fog. ‘Body Bog’ is a punchy affair which showcases the ability of the band to mix steady grinds with atomic blasts, all led by the guttural outbursts of Ilkka Laaksonen, but yet again I find myself drifting.

It’s easy for reviewers to throw 8 or 9 ratings at this sort of stuff, but the harsh reality is that Ecstatic Death Reign barely hits a 7 because the familiarity is all too consuming
.

Neil Arnold

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