Inverloch - Dusk... Subside
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Doomdeath/Funeral Doom
3 songs (22:20)
Release year: 2012
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Reviewed by Charles
“Michael Gove has an annoying face.” “Return of the Living Dead was a good film.” “diSEMBOWELMENT’s Transcendence in to the Peripheral was a distinctive album.”

All three of the above statements are lines you could easily imagine Hugh Grant saying in a Richard Curtis film. Those scenes where he faffs interminably about about for the appropriate words, eventually settling for something comedically under-confrontational. You know, like all British people talk. In other words, they are absolutely enormous understatements. They could not be more understated if they strode into Asda wearing a big red sign saying “this is a massive understatement”, and screaming through a megaphone “I mean this more forcefully than the tone in which I am expressing it implies, you cunts”.

Where was I? Oh yes, only one of the statements in particular concerns us today. Given that it’s Monday, metalreviews.com update night, that means it must be the third! And yes, diSEMBOWELMENT’s Transcendence into the Peripheral is indeed a distinctive album. Very little else comes close to its particular type of esoteric darkness; a critical influence on both funeral doom and doomdeath, and undoubtedly one of the best albums ever to come out of those two subgenres combined. Eerie expanses of ambiance, crashing slow doom chords, snorting death metal, and abstractly floating melodic lines with little sense of tonality, all swirl together in an oozing miasma of vileness. For those of you still wondering why this is relevant to the review in question, let me reveal: Inverloch is the new, and in many ways remarkably similar, project by a number of d.’s members. Indeed, on some of their tour material it even claims to represent the “final embodiment” of that legendary Australian act.

Not surprisingly, then, the Dusk… Subside EP is good news for doom fans. Great news, in fact. These three tracks, running 22 minutes in total, represent the closest we will come to a re-visiting of Transcendence…, which is nice in itself, but better when they are such strong congtributions in their own right. Opener Within Frozen Beauty feels perhaps like a slightly more high-powered variant on that sound. It begins with a sickly wash of clean electric guitar, which is interrupted by a flaming catapult missile of brutally impressive death metal. It then slows down dramatically, duh, before revealing a glowering lead solo that is far more appropriately metallic than the wonderfully incongruous clean prog leads of old- those that sounded like they had wandered in, bemused, from a Cynic recording session next door. Possible diminution in gauche characterfulness aside, this is a blinding doomdeath track.

Moreover, on the two remaining tracks Inverloch once again become more abstract, and seem to reconnect somewhat more strongly with the esoteric early-90s vibe. The Menin Road clanks funereally through feedback laden chords and trudging percussion, before a vacant stare of a clean lead line enters to sinister effect. Shadows of the Flame is similar but punctuated with some blinding death metal interjections and barbaric drumming. The latter underpins droolingly repetitive funeral doom chugging, before segueing back into the kind of barbarous and primitive blasting that old-school revivalist death metal bands could spend several albums trying to recreate. For those interested in the outer extremes of doom metal, it is important that you seek this out.

Killing Songs :
All
Charles quoted no quote
Other albums by Inverloch that we have reviewed:
Inverloch - Distance | Collapsed reviewed by Goat and quoted 85 / 100
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