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CORPSESSED
Abysmal Thresholds
Dark Descent (2014)
Rating: 8.5/10

Finland’s Corpsessed are a frightening bunch to say the least. The quintet have been rather quiet since forming in 2007, but with two EPs under their belt I was waiting with baited breath for their debut offering and boy was it worth that wait.

Abysmal Thresholds is a really gloomy affair featuring cold, yet dense guitars, ashen, chesty vocals and barbaric drums, and I can’t recommend this slab of silt enough.

The band consists of vocalist Niko Matilainen, bassist Mikko Pöllä, drummer Jussi-Pekka Manner and the guitar wall of Jyri Lustig and Matti Mäkelä, and it’s the two axemen who are responsible for the cavernous sound this debut ten-tracker has to offer. I’m mightily impressed by the overall dank sound as if they gathered all their gear, left the studio and decided to record their work in some dreary cave.

The album opens with a brief instrumental (‘Invocation’) then proceeds to cover the listener in a layer of soot via the extraordinary behemoth that is ‘Of Desolation’, a grating yet immense slab of a tune that feeds off black metal values mixed with guttural death metal of the highest order.

The riffs chug along like some machine constructed in the very depths of hell. It wades across the landscape, leaving a trail of devastation in its path; think old Bolt Thrower with hints of classic Swedish death metal, a sprig of old Darkthrone, cold doom metal, a dash of Demigod, and even a pinch of Floridian death metal.

There’s a lot to savour here within this monolith, but it’s a cacophony that’ll leave you sodden such is the dank atmosphere. These guys are quite happy to one moment batter you with a frenzy of blistering death metal, and the next slow the pace down to an apocalyptic crawl. ‘Trepanation’ opts for the former, coming across like some Incantation-styled derangement, while ‘Sovereign’ takes its time to rise from the murky depths, acting as a mere occasional tumbling drum and droning, bludgeoning guitar plod.

For me, the true peak of the opus is the epic closer ‘The Threshold’ with its cold, grey guitars, which rises from the mountain like swirling, ashen mists as Niko Matilainen bellows like some unhappy ogre awakened from his thorny pit. This is a perfect mix of death and doom metal, heaving and oozing in an uncouth manner but with not a care in the world. Its arrogant strains of pale are mere echoes of what has already gone before, namely the brief juggernaut that is ‘Demoniacal Subjugation’ and the stark gothic atmospherics of ‘Ravening Tides’ with its soundtrack-esque intro and bone-breaking guitar rush, which evokes images of pasty pastures wasted by this metal storm.

Brutality is the key at whatever pace Corpsessed choose, and in either state they are a force than not many could combat. Abysmal Thresholds is a debut album that lives up to its name and more.

Neil Arnold

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