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GOREKAUST
Ancient Halls Of Emptiness

Self-released (2022)
Rating: 8/10

There is always a nasty, filth-coated Finnish death metal release around the corner and the latest is the debut full-length offering from Gorekaust. This is a band that has a tendency to smash your brain to a pulp by way of the bass alone, while the rest of the instrumentation is just a case of bonus bludgeoning of the highest fetid order.

Like many Finnish acts before them, Gorekaust channels that mould-covered old school flavour while showing a maturity and stuffily melodic grimness as ‘In Your Debts You Shall Rot’ kicks things off with a foot-tapping nod before the final scurries of anguish and dehydrated despair set in.

Some of the rattling dynamics of this mucky record have flashes of ghoulish Autopsy, more so because the bass is so stark, skeletal and pungent in its rambles as showcased again with the moth-eaten, bowel-removing morbidity of ‘Black Lungs Of Depravity’. But this album is sordid and unclean throughout, where the almost jarring aesthetics of ‘Immortal Arts Beyond Human Comprehension’ dip towards an almost thorny black / death snarl in the vocal sense, but those deeper, guttural guffs of gloom are never far away.

This album only offers seven tracks with a total duration of 34 minutes, but throughout you feel as if you’ve been rolled up in a manky carpet like a putrefying cadaver sent out to the garbage. Yeah, you get interesting faster segments but it’s the utterly despondent bubbling of tracks such as ‘Inhumane Gaze’ where you really start to itch and succumb to the boiling vats of pus.

If you’re a fan of lumbering, primitive death metal that lumbers like a fat serial killer down an alley of trash then let this be your soundtrack for such wild imaginings. I also recommend you check out Gorekaust’s Putrefied Icon EP from last year too, but as debut albums go Ancient Halls Of Emptiness is another groggy, decomposing death metal record to die for.

Neil Arnold

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