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SEREMENT
Abhorrent Invocations

Dolorem (2024)
Rating: 8/10

Two years ago Greek blackened deathsters Serement teased my ears with their all too short Deviation From God EP. Only two tracks were featured – ‘Malevolent Mist Over The Mount Of The Deceased’ and ‘No Reflection For His Shadow’ – but both songs were savage, if somewhat clicky in the drum sound. Even so, the Athens-based combo disappeared and I wondered if they would return. But now Serement is back with a debut full-length album which features both the aforementioned tracks and a batch of even better songs to boot.

The real high point of the album is the vocals which act as dense blankets of suffocating darkness, but the overall sound and atmosphere is so deep and dark, even with the blasphemous fast numbers such as opening cut ‘Stench Of Torment’. Imagine if you will a blackened incarnation of Deicide with hectic melodies and hateful blasts.

Strangely, Abhorrent Invocations is a record that’s instantly accessible even with its pitch black writing shadows of technicality and speedy sections where drummer Vaggelis Vasilopoulos works overtime. Slower segments do emerge throughout the opus and there’s some great, meaty breakdowns on ‘Sworn’ and ‘Subliminal Enslavement’ where the band gets extremely melodic, enticing you into their yawning black charms.

This time round ‘Malevolent Mist Over The Mount Of The Deceased’ and ‘No Reflection For His Shadow’ sound meatier and more evil, but maybe that’s just because they are surrounded by such hellish designs and those thunderous kick-drums. It’s such a colossal wall of sound that’s never short of ferocity.

‘Frozen Dawn Of Death’ snakes with a sinister tone in the guitar work, exhibiting those slick black metal nuances which cavort with thicker, fuller dynamics. At times streaks of Morbid Angel creep into the fray and ‘Forging The Darkness’ provides fat, twisted riffs and throaty vocal chants. Serement are something akin to a black, slithering serpent worming from its foul lair like an oil-slick carpet. This is compelling and dramatic without being flashy, a Greek phantom adorned in black and accompanied by storms.

Neil Arnold

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