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BONES
Sombre Opulence

Invictus Productions (2022)
Rating: 8.5/10

Not to be confused with the US band of the same name, this Bones is the Belgian brood that since forming in 2010 has released two demos and two EPs. Sombre Opulence is the debut full-length and it’s another quality death metal release for this year to try to handle.

This is tortured death metal in the vein of Autopsy, which is chaotic, sometimes punky, eye-gouging, corpse-licking, gut-munching, slurping sickness propelled by some utterly disgusting vocal traits and wild, demented guitars that bring doom-laden and graven riffs coupled with maniacal solos that pierce the gloom.

Just like classic Autopsy there’s that perverse grooviness, so wonderfully displayed on the tortured grilling that is ‘Execration Rites’, and puked into further realms of evil speed with ‘Funerary Magic’ where the vocals become drowning bellows of disgust.

If you like your death metal rancid, filthy and zombified then you can’t go wrong with this sort of sleaze – it’s meaty yet twisted, cavernous yet pulverising. The slower segments get me every time, maggot-infested and clogged arteries of gore that blow chunks of sick at the listener while holding you hostage like a clan of cannibal rednecks whose eyes bulge more than their beer-filled bellies.

The foul tripe that is ‘Withering’ whines with a bleakness that evokes images of grey, smouldering pyres as the stench of singed flesh rapes the nostrils. ‘Primordial Idolatry’ fuses a blackened grimness with the expected melancholic meandering, while ‘Great Altars Of Ascension’ twists with hideous Morbid Angel-type riffery. The latter is an eight-minute cauldron of human fat and boiled bones, the result being a putrid stew of orgiastic riffs daubed in sticky blood and layered with levels of squalid coatings.

Sombre Opulence is another sick entry in the “modern” death metal catalogue which is now so full that its occupants will have to start feasting on each other’s flesh to survive.

Neil Arnold

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