Another artist on the Aesthetic Death roster who are new to me. Well, that’s kind of how it goes for this idiosyncratic label, and all power to them as they release some real head-scratching, soul punching, brain tingling albums. And Ryan Scott Fairfield’s one man project out of Maine, Hallowed Butchery is all of those.

Apparently inspired by the time he spent living amongst, but not part of, a religious cult devoted to death this album package contains twin booklets. One is of lyrics, the other is “The consecrated tenets of the Church of the Final Pilgrimage. The text is intact, as are the corresponding images. This was originally drafted by the church’s founder: Jonathan Curliss. ” In here you will find their assertion that only death is real, and that anything that artificially interferes with the natural span (either medicine prolonging, or violence shortening) is an anathema. Unethical.

Fascinating reading, both frightening and comforting in equal measure.

Music, though. The music. This is a strange and shifting hybrid. We get harsh funeral doom to begin, the kind that sounds like slow, grinding machinery like Evoken or early Thergothon. Slow, ponderous and malevolent it slides to a neo-folk whisper, beautifully blended. “God damn the night, god damn the day…” cry the rough-hewn vocals before the voice cuts clean. The movement between this harsh doom and echoing haunting neo-folk is seamless.

Dark ambient, almost An Axis Of Perdition like with sinister background voices, that almost industrial feel, edges in. It mutates and reforms passing through something akin to EBM and synthwave but never breaking the flow until it seems as though Fairfield has discovered hidden rivers below, connecting these distant genres.

‘Flesh Borer’ is a cathedral lost in some void. The voices echo and howl as the riff descends and slowly falls through waves of keyboards to drift out on acoustic guitar and whispered spoken word. ‘Death To All’ pushes further into industrial; a hint of Godflesh beaten by the hammer blow soundtrack to Tetsuo:The Iron Man with chanted choir and twisted voices enveloping and smothering.

The coda, ‘On The Altar’ is the perfect moment to gather your thoughts. Imagine The Devil’s Trade ushering you from the church, reminding you of the sermon for you to dwell upon walking home in the early morning half-light.

We pass through a world of funeral doom, industrial, synthwave and neo-folk and yet there is no rope jerking you from one to the other, no cracks between. This is beautifully judged music; deft compositional blending of seemingly disparate parts and influences into something that is musically a singular presence.

It is an eerie place, this album, no doubt. Disturbing. But thought provoking. Even comforting to some. We witness the betrayal by deities and religion, the lying promise of eternal life to keep the leash upon us when only death is real. But that knowledge is somehow freeing too.  ‘Not everything lives. However, everything that does live will surely die.’

There are no excuses not to live.

Exemplary, unusual and deeply intelligent. A taker of breath.

(9/10 Gizmo)

https://www.facebook.com/hbdoom

https://hallowedbutchery.com/album/deathsongs-from-the-hymnal-of-the-church-of-the-final-pilgrimage-remastered

https://www.aestheticdeath.com/releases.php?mode=singleitem&albumid=4965