Crawling out of the wretched abyss comes a ritualistic offering of pure sickening brutality to present before the extreme music altar! Concilium’s debut release, “Desecration,” is an extremely raw sounding piece of black/death metal that also incorporates some agonizing doom elements. This Portuguese extreme metal band constructs some unbelievably insidious sounding atmospheres, while also leading listeners straight into a nightmare realm full of inhuman sounds.
Joining forces with Sentient Ruin Laborites, Concilium looks to unleash a tsunami of unfathomable chaos upon the metal world with their debut release. Musically, the band does not rely on overly technical compositions, or flashy guitar work to bog you down with random and excessive sounding riff progressions. Throughout the album Concilium presents solid sounding arrangements that are locked into this hellish vision, thus taking listeners on one hellish journey.
The album's low-fi and unforgiving occult like atmosphere succeeds in creating a merciless sounding musical landscape. On the open track, “From the Chalice,” the band introduces listeners to this massive bludgeoning of fiendish riffs and tormented sounding vocals. They do a solid job building up anticipation as the song progresses, which ultimately establishes their sacrilegious sounding dominion of pure evil.
On the following tracks like, “Shadow Gospels” and “From Emptiness to Oblivion,” the band continues to explore the dark confines of their abhorrent musical mindset, while also taking the music in a variety of haunting directions. “From Emptiness to Oblivion,” is a truly impressive arrangement that incorporates some mesmerizing guitar work to create a calming void like world that eventually succumbs to an explosion of raw ritualistic sounding instrumental chaos.
The drumming on the album is very primitive sounding and definitely adds to the band's bloodthirsty raw style by providing the right amount of brutal aggression. On the track, “Sacred Land of the Impure Blood,” you feel as though the world is crumbling around you and the entire arrangement is fueled by a barrage of skull crushing drum parts, inhumane vocals and ear piercing guitar riffs. The last song on the album, “Blood Candles,” is without question my favorite track and presents a more mind altering doom like atmosphere. Over the years I’ve notice that when recorded properly, the slower and extremely sludgy sounding arrangements always seems to leave the greatest impact. Plus, you become possessed by the simplistic rhythms that guide you through all the apocalyptic sounding decimation to reach that calming end when everything slowly fades away.
Once again, here is a band working Sentient Ruin that gets what it takes to record an impressive and engaging album from beginning to end. The haunting blend of extreme music styles and raw presentation made, “Desecration,” an extremely enjoyable listen. I welcome more bands like Concilium, because when done right and without all the over the top nonsense, you are given an extremely profound sounding listening experience. There is substance, which I find to be lacking in most modern music that tends to cause people to become mindless sheep. Put on some Concilium and they will awaken to a vivid reality of unholy desecration and ruthless sounding destruction!
Listen to "From the Chalice" below:
Sentient Ruin Bandcamp (Album comes out July 2, 2021):
Really enjoyed your review Robby.
ReplyDeleteThank you
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