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CORPSESSED
Impetus Of Death

Dark Descent (2018)
Rating: 8/10

Four years ago I reviewed the impressive debut album (Abysmal Thresholds) from Finnish death-heads Corpsessed, and I’ve had to wait patiently for their return. Although none too impressed by the cover art, as expected this sophomore outing is a gleefully grotesque and savage affair.

Impetus Of Death opens with the title track, which brings suspense and atmosphere with its meandering guitar hook and sporadic crushes of almost industrialized punishments before brooding towards a blend of blackened, abrasive sprawls as the quintet supplies a slightly faster than mid-tempo attack. Eventually, the track unravels as a doomy expression coated in murky dissonance and gargantuan swaggers of arrogance and dread.

‘Sortilege’ brings melancholic solo wails which infiltrate the chugging doomy escapades which then shift into blasts of icy pace. It is classic pounding, foaming death metal savagery delivered with such haste and power that the vocal barks act as freezing whirlwinds and blizzards. The guitar work is efficient as black / death combinations rattle with such animosity and arrogance before a slower yet grandiose gloominess prevails.

Meanwhile, ‘Forlorn Burial’ begins like a fetid, heaving manifestation of utmost horror and doom. Again there’s that somber air to the guitar work as the riffs roll with malevolence, with the drums hissing and plodding to create one monolithic, ascending pillar of black, billowing scorn. Then not short of the two-minute mark everything comes together to create a grinding metal machine of smoking cogs and rattling turbines as the drums, bass and guitar pick up pace in order to keep up with the intimidating demonic growls of Niko Matilainen.

There’s always a sense of the morose and certainly the bombastic about much of what Corpsessed comes up with. The band create enormous structures that build slowly into genuinely disturbing and visionary networks of hate and blackness, and nowhere is this more apparent than on the ten-minute album closer ‘Starless Event Horizon’. This one is a creepy soundtrack of terror that starts its journey as a remote clank and trickle before we’re engulfed by a tide of slow-motion silt that comes heaving its dirty rectum from the pits of Hell. The track continues its creep but we just know what’s coming as bass and guitar provide further building blocks to what is already a monstrous crescendo of sound, with the drums dragging the manifestation along by the scruff of its neck. But it take a full five-minutes of such sprawling horror to finally be injected by slimy garbles of speed, and it’s then that Corpsessed become a flurry of despicable chords and abrasive dynamics before resorting back to mighty layers of scary doom.

Elsewhere, there’s the brutal waves of ‘Graveborne’, the sickening trends of ‘Begetter Of Doom’ with its tidal riffs, the blistering and caustic attack of ‘Endless Plains Of Dust’, and the shortest track on offer ‘Paroxysmal’. The latter is arguably the fastest song on offer and comes hammering and clattering with such noise and harshness that by its finale the only respite is death.

With Impetus Of Death Corpsessed has continued its destructive path with another fleshy, feisty and at times frightening composition best suited to nights when the windows are battered by howling winds and the demons of the mind are unleashed.

Neil Arnold

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