The Mortal Horizon is Desecresy’s first album as a solo project of Tommi Gronqvist’s after vocalist Jarno Nurmi left to focus on Serpent Ascending. Picking up right where Stoic Death left off, The Mortal Horizon is band’s most percussive and violent yet. The album takes after the death metal debut Arches of Entropy but is set into the multi-layered, ritualistic minimalist narratives of Desecresy’s later career.
Compared to Desecresy’s prior good work, listeners will first notice that The Mortal Horizon features much more aggressive but still minimalist percussion. The drumming this time around is almost as if Andy Whale (Bolt Thrower) learned to keep time and decided to put his limited death metal beat repertoire to good use as the punctuating metronomes to black metal compositions. While the drumming isn’t as explosive as Whale, such unhinged percussion would not suit Desecresy’s music. Gronqvist handles the rhythmic catharsis almost like Fred Etsby (Carnage and Dismember). Repeated bursts of blasts and double kick fills sound like the systematic, evenly intervaled bursts of a firing squad at a mass execution.
The main riffing influence on The Mortal Horizon is again the grinding, two chord riffs of mid-period Bolt Thrower. Rather than arranging these grind riffs into the death metal mazes of War Master or the almost heavy metal structures of The IVth Crusade, the chords slowly flow forward in layered narrative cycles as if they were played by Profanatica or Demoncy. Atop these are leads inspired by traditional Finnish death metal (Demigod) and seemingly Summoning, an influence shared by Desecresy’s ultra violent and exemplary contemporary Sammath. Desecresy slowly progresses these black metal leads forward to entrance the listener in narrative cycles of decay leading to sudden death. What results is almost Finnish death metal if written by a minimalist composer like Steve Reich or if the movement had paid attention to the melodic sacrificial rituals of Beherit. This is all for the better.
The Mortal Horizon is not a death metal album of spelunking through mysterious underground caverns containing the hidden ruins of a lost civilization. Desecresy’s ritual of mostly mid-paced, dirgeful dissonant tension that is here cathartically relieved by ritual consonance and percussive attack is like watching a battle-hardened warrior waiting for his chance to methodically and efficiently butcher a dozen foes; a well-disciplined Lone Wolf samurai cutting through the divine test of combat seemingly effortlessly. His strikes are graceful, quick, and explosively visceral for they are all sword forms practiced religiously through Zen to achieve an existential mass slaughter on the battlefield. He does not slog, meander, or try; he just does. Desecresy’s music never struggles despite the absolute darkness. There is only ritual and death.
Tags: 2017, Black Metal, death metal, desecresy, Finland, Finnish Black Metal, Finnish Death Metal, Grindcore, minimalism, minimalist, review, the mortal horizon, tommi gronqvist, xtreem music
So it’s good yeah? Best of 2017?
So far.
Anything else from this year that is worth checking out?
Gonna check this out. Thanks for the rec.
Sounds like a piece of shit from the sample.
This boring shit
This band always had good cover art but this is just fucking great.
I still think Chasmic Transcendence is their best even though most people consider it their weakest, partly due to some gripe with the vocals being too high in the mix which I never understood.
I’d agree that it’s their best, listened to it right after hearing this song
The vocal mix is fine, the riffcraft is generally weak on it however.
Your first article that has no narcissism.
I’m a diehard fag for old Finnish death metal, but the newer bands like Krypts never did much for me. This is great, however.
Is this, then, Desecresy wrapping it up? I mean, with respect to taking after the debut album but applying the later stylistic developments of the band.
Yes. The Mortal Horizon is the first Desecresy album where after I finish listening to it, I want more Desecresy material right then and there.
Daniel, do you sit down to wee?
I never sit down to piss; waste of time. I only sit down to shit when there is a sit-down toilet; otherwise squat.
This has quickly become one of my favorite death metal bands. I second that Chasmic Transcendence is their strongest offering so far but I’m looking forward to this.
so it’s just Portal with a less goofy image
Nah I don’t think so. This band has songs that go somewhere
swab those semen samples out of your ears and you might come to a different conclusion
How have you heard the album already?
Of course I have of but these kibitzers probably have not. Buy The Mortal Horizon when it comes out.
What I meant was, how did you hear it already? Considering only the single has been released thus far.
Death Metal Underground receives promotional materials for review except from funderground labels we have mocked too much; they only send their mediocre material to hipster rags.
Xtreem Music is the successor to Repulse, still run by Dave Rotten, and is a legit death metal label. He keeps half of the good Finnish stuff in print too.
he should get the rights to Pure Blood Doom and put out a fucking reissue already
Who sang that?
It went downhill after the Doom Skeptron.
“Desecresy’s ritual of mostly mid-paced, dirgeful dissonant tension that is here cathartically relieved by ritual consonance and percussive attack is like watching a battle-hardened warrior waiting for his chance to methodically and efficiently butcher a dozen foes; a well-disciplined Lone Wolf samurai cutting through the divine test of combat seemingly effortlessly. His strikes are graceful, quick, and explosively visceral for they are all sword forms practiced religiously through Zen to achieve an existential mass slaughter on the battlefield. He does not slog, meander, or try; he just does. Desecresy’s music never struggles despite the absolute darkness. There is only ritual and death.”
now this is writing. all of you should in awe. bend the knee to your supreme hessian lord, or i will personally cut you down myself. hessians have tolerated softcocks and finks for far too long.