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DESEKRYPTOR
Vortex Oblivion

Blood Harvest (2023)
Rating: 8.5/10

Having teased as with a brace of demo recordings, a split project with fellow American band Draghkar and an EP (Curse Of The Execrated), Fort Wayne, Indiana-based savages Desekryptor finally coughs up a full-length album.

As expected this is a somewhat chilly affair that stiffens the limbs and hardens the arteries with its murky plods and icy flurries. One gets the feeling with Desekryptor that they have spent too long in the basement, toiling away like some maddening beast that has constructed a vast, yet suffocating cavernous wall around itself.

Dripping with esoteric imagery and clandestine rumblings, this eight track behemoth feels inaccessible without being complex musically. The layers presented are instead levels of black rock and dark grey cement which glisten with an otherworldly condensation. The result is vast echoes of subterranean misery where pace or slogging becomes one heaving mass led by cold, remote vocal resonations. Who dares scales the crevices of such lung-cloying horror where cracks filter horrid, seeping gasps of noise?

Desekryptor, like a lot of bands of this ilk, are best described as some kind of rank, bottom-feeding dim dweller that boasts cosmic origins, rather than anything musical. However, that’s not to say that such blasts and wisps are bereft of melody because Vortex Oblivion sure is one colossal leviathan of sound. But Desekryptor exists in that dank chamber where it revels in its own faecal forces; hear a track like ‘Tornadic Hordes’ or ‘Dagger In The Christ’ to appreciate the nightmarish levels.

The band conjure foul ghosts of Morbid Angel, Incantation, Krypts et al but add their own possessed vapours to create a bestial blur. The hideous seep of ‘Seeds Of Disease’, the dismal hail of ‘Omen Of Terror’ and the sinister surges of the title track are all miasmic contortions despicably woven as tides of black foam and crypt mulch.

This is a debut album that’s been worth the wait but the recovery time may be even longer. Vortex Oblivion is like potholing into the depths of Satan’s ass only to be shit out 30 minutes later amidst a flurry of volcanic debris and mouldy innards.

Neil Arnold

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