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STENCH OF DEATH
Aeternum Ater

Self-released (2022)
Rating: 8/10

Canadian tech-death isn’t often on my radar, but I didn’t mind the EP released by these guys last year and which was followed earlier this year by the single ‘Pillars Drenched In Gore’.

Stench Of Death is a three-headed beast of heavyweight time signatures, obscure vocal slurs and hammering percussive blasts. This kind of record takes several listens to appreciate and those with an untrained ear may become entangled then ritualistically smothered by its aggressive smears and that trickling yet crushing bass.

Everything about Aeternum Ater feels well-crafted, almost weaved to brutal perfection as the band construct monolithic pulses that rush with intricate speed before lowering themselves into bowel-munching slowness whereby exceptional doomy trudges spasmodically cavort with gnashing, chugging segments of overwhelming constructed chaos.

It’s difficult to inhale anything rotten about the record, simply because of its varying waves and pulses. The hype percussion on ‘Eons Nestled In A Black Obsidian Obelisk’ shakes the cranium until the brain begins to leak from the ears, but the next minute you are caught up in a fleshed-out wave of consuming riffage where alien and dissonant chambers unravel and echo to the sound of twisted riffage and percussive fits.

I’m glad that the aforementioned ‘Pillars Drenched In Gore’ made the grade to, where again there’s that menacing riffage mixed with stark, angular networks and accessible technicality.

The sound of these Calgary lunatics feels somewhat expansive and yet also tight as they play with levels of brutality where disagreeable tides manifest from the background to combat that gruelling slogs. However, within the chaos there are some great catchy shifts, and again I refer to ‘Pillars Drenched In Gore’ and it’s devilish gnashing before a twisted bass-line heralds another shift.

The titles say it all too. ‘Spontaneous Erratic Corporeal Inversions’ and the less bamboozling ‘Ichorian Sea’ still match each other in their musical mayhem. The latter being a dark, foreboding yet spatial unravelling of barbarity, while the former squealing with its vocal extremity but churning like otherworldly seas.

‘Twilight Era’ flickers with a Gorguts-meets-Morbid Angel aggression, but the percussion is on another level – flitting, jerking, yet always remaining aggressive as machine-gun fire. But for me, it’s ‘Forever Whispering Ash’ which sums up the intriguing and complex sound of Stench Of Death as the listener becomes awash with dense riffing. Even as someone who likes to take this sort of stuff with a pinch of salt, it’s difficult not to be shaken and stirred by this brain-shuddering eye for detail and density.

Neil Arnold

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