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SHROUD OF DESPONDENCY
Defective Overpass EP

Self-released (2014)
Rating: 7.5/10

With their grating brand of demonic black metal, American extremists Shroud Of Despondency are somewhat becoming veterans in the field in spite of having formed in the late 90s.

Over the course of its history, Shroud Of Despondency has released five full-length albums, these being; For Eternity Brings No Hope (2002), Dark Meditations In Monastic Seclusion (2011), Objective: Isolation (2011), Pine (2012), and 2014’s Tied To A Dying Animal. This new two-track digitally released EP is to be a precursor to the band’s final opus, which is due out in the coming months. There’s no doubt that these guys will be sorely missed, having battered fans senseless over the years with their brackish metal.

So, it’s best to dive straight into this album teaser via the seven-minute spike of ‘In View Of Birth’ with its confessional introduction, which is then rudely interrupted by the blazing guitar rake and those hyper tap drums. They are typical unrelenting black metal harmonies of the harsh persuasion fronted by those Ron Blemberg yaps and dry rasps. The track races without a lull, it’s main scathing melody so persistent that it can only provide some sort of barbed entertainment; neither overtly heavy or remotely light, ‘In View Of Birth’ just speeds without mercy until the two-and-a-half minute mark where it slows to become a buzzing, festering pit of tumultuous horror and low-end despicability.

Vocally, Blemberg is almost of the Gollum (Lord Of The Rings) schizophrenia, but the band soon exhibits its bewitching dexterity by way of a peculiarly haunting halfway stage of subtle musicianship which acts as a deft soundtrack to a background of horrendous screams and bizarre cheers. Here, Shroud Of Despondency flirts with doom-laden nuances until a minute or so from the full-time whistle when the combo resorts back to those vile rasps and hurtling passages of putridness.

The second track on the EP is the acoustic strum of ‘Valleys’, another subtle reach out from this versatile posse which revels in the melancholy of Rory Heikkila’s vocal croon. The track is a soaring breath of fresh air, best suited to a flickering campfire under an autumnal moon. Indeed, it’s far from being in any way relative to black metal but more of a woodland hum; stripped back, sparse and stark as that acoustic guitar sends us into the nether realms of the night. And so, with both tracks riddled with the thought of confession, Defective Overpass slips into a deathly silence and leaves us enchanted and yet scorched and waiting in anticipation for the last instalment of this interesting band.

Neil Arnold

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