On the surface, Desecresy grafted Bolt Thrower into periodically ambient underground metal like Asphyx and Demoncy, producing a sense of exploring catacombs and labyrinths in darkness while pursuing or being pursued, producing a mood of contemplative calm in the midst of intensity.
Underneath however we find dark metal of the nocturnal variety like the first Darkthrone or second Cadaver, shadowed by the subterranean obscurity of early Incantation, but developed in its own vocabulary of droning ambient riffs that shift internal form while keeping rhythm consistent.
This produces an effect like a fever dream, where distinct objects emerge from a very similar background that seems to alter itself when the focus is elsewhere, revealing an infinite maze of possibilities emerging from a few core ideas to which the momentum returns before deviating yet again.
Deserted Realms calls to mind the style of more recent Descresy works, specifically Chasmic Transcendence (2014) but with the driving power of Arches of Entropy, creating old school death metal with its own voice and approach but that upholds the distinctive power of the genre.
Tags: death metal, desecresy
I like the decades-of-experience comparisons to other bands. A precise and helpful review. And really evocative, much like the album seems to be.
A good sign found in Desecresy’s work is that isolated songs often don’t function that well, and you need repeated listens on a whole album before they all unfold as parts of a greater logic.
I’ve somwhat hopped on the Desecresy bandwagon, I can relate to criticism of the formulaic approach and noodling, but it’s just the rigorous (over-)application of the “negativity trance”-inducing properties of some of the best material (e.g. earlier-to-mid Suffocation and Fleshcrawl, and some Sinister.) Concept, adept composition and musicianship are certainly there, with Stoic Death maybe the pinnacle of this formation, but other works like Unveil in the Abyss didn’t disappoint either.
At a certain point the best of death metal tips over into ambient terrain, and this is what I’m out for. I guess you can have the mind-expanding effects of the best works only once in your lifetime. So, sadly, I find myself indulging mostly in atmosphere now.
Ambient metal is like this: you immerse in a mood and then its contexture changes. Bolt Thrower, Summoning, and Darkthrone are all like this.