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FORMLESS OEDON
Streams Of Rot

Memento Mori (2023)
Rating: 8.5/10

So impressed was I by this Filipino band and their 2020 EP Deathless Luminosity that I just had to get my bloody claws on their new debut full-length. If you’re not familiar with this Laguna-based foursome then snap up a copy of this; an utterly dark and atmospheric release dripping with esoteric detail and driven by cold, yet somehow clammy and cavernous riffs.

Streams Of Rot is an album that provides a perfect soundtrack to reading one of those vast H.P. Lovecraft collections as dense, meaty riffs combine with humid percussive flurries. Vocally, it’s no real surprise that Rozel Nikkō provides chesty eruptions that echo through vast reeking chambers, and the whole feel of this opus is one of cosmic persuasion; bereft of any sort earthly climate.

You will of course here a lot of death metal played in this vein but what we have here is effective in its murkiness through worshipping the old school in its delivery. When you hear songs like ‘…In The Flesh’ and ‘Beyond Eclipse Of Time’ you can smell that dismal air as those death / doom slogs come the fore. Meanwhile, a song like ‘Voidspawn’ is pacier and riddled with a cold, dissonant morbidity, but having said that, the whole album is morbid and yet somehow haunting in spite of the obvious lack of subtlety.

The title cut wraps up things nicely as an aching bleak composition stretched out as an abysmal yawning chasm of grey. The tones throughout are melodious but sombre – an ideal slab of melancholic, dragging death metal then for those miserable nights in the fog.

Neil Arnold

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