Atmospheric death metal crew Desolate Shrine have been busy this year with the release of their third album The Heart of the Netherworld in January and now the hard-to-find debut gets a re-issue on Hellthrasher after a little over four years. There’s something very Swedish sounding about Desolate Shrine – Entombed, Dismember or maybe even Grave. But there’s also a darker, even more impenetrable about its crushing sound which perhaps is thanks to the influence of its Finnish homeland where metal bands never seem to lose an opportunity to be distinctly grim with an added undercurrent of threat.
There’s no preamble with Tenebrous Towers. The Smell of Blood and Iron takes you instantly to where the band wants you to be, edging slowly towards the gates of hell. The trudging percussion matches the blackened, martial riffs as the twin vocalists – best heard on next track No Place for a Human – herald the arrival of your putrid being at the edge of eternal damnation. The first track is a clear highlight and a good introduction to the band generally. But it’s not until the third track, appropriately called Crushing Darkness, that the band really shows its hand. Dirty mid-paced, almost doomy guitars hammer home the band’s intention which is clearly to bring down sulphur and choking hellfire in musical form while blinding your senses with its sonic miasma.
The pace speeds up now and again for some hair-spinning interludes but really that’s just to haul you from your doom-smoke reverie. If anything the overall pace begins to slow further with the footslogging The Brightest Night taking the band further into doom such is the toiling, lingering nature of the riffs. Desolate Shrine is all about nuance, the hint of soulful melody and leaden-heavy atmosphere rather than flying guitar acrobatics. But the thick undergrowth of sound the band produces sometimes masks the activity therein. Tenebrous Towers is, within its thickly distorted sound, a buzzing hive – mainly thanks to the obvious talents of LL, the multi-instrumentalist who covers all duties except the vocals.
Despite the slow trudge towards hell’s gates, the final few tracks liven things up a bit and are perhaps designed to jolt its fried audiences back from the brink. That’s not to say that the miasma ascends – more that its swirling approach quickens, blinding and disorienting in even more unsettling ways. Desolate Shrine’s debut was a fine start for the band and one it is now comprehensively building upon. As you might expect, there’s the kind of appealing grit and chaotic perfection to this that will endear many listeners, as early works often do. And even if subsequent efforts are perhaps more accomplished and are arguably better produced, the debut still benefits greatly from having its own rough and blackened atmosphere.
(7.5/10 Reverend Darkstanley)
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