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FERUM
Asunder / Erode

Unorthodox Emanations / Avantgarde Music (2022)
Rating: 9/10

Vocalist Samantha Alessi puts on a remarkably demonic performance on this debut full-length from Italian death / doom metal act Ferum. I’d been looking forward to this one after hearing the 2018 Vergence EP, but the trio has excelled itself with Asunder / Erode.

Ferum plays some of the heaviest metal I’ve heard for a long time. Cianide’s Mike Perun features on ‘The Undead Truth’ which is the first track I’d heard from the new album. It’s a slow-mo pulverisation of chiming, tolling percussion and dragging guitars that just ache with blackness and dread.

Of the eight tracks on offer, seven of them are lengthy, but none are arduous. Instead, we find ourselves immersed by chunky, fleshed riffs, hefty drum plods and reverberating bass lines, all vile constructions to be headed by Samantha Alessi’s evil, guttural growls.

The outfit has progressed into a cataclysmic and dense cacophony since the EP. The rank, foul trudging of ‘Halfhead’ brims with suspenseful logic as the drums hiss with menace, while the ghoulish strains of ‘Belong’ lumber with cavernous aplomb.

The sound rarely shifts into anything remotely upbeat. The sullen ooze of ‘Monolithic Acquiescence’ heaves in time to a dull churchyard bell and clanking percussion as the murky lead struggles to soar above the droning dreariness. Of all the tracks on offer this is Ferum at its most drooling and laborious, effectively crushing the listener in one sodden glide of its muddy hand. Only ‘Desolate Vantaa’ shifts anywhere towards a catchier grind, but it’s still chugging deathliness reeking of bleak character.

Existing very much with feet of clay, Ferum’s foreboding imagery and damp bludgeoning is an ideal companion for anyone with an ear for humid slogs that sluggishly drag you into pits of utter despair. Asunder / Erode is as gruelling and grotesque as I had hoped.

Neil Arnold

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