In 1992, Danish Death Metal band Maceration unleashed their debut album entitled ‘A Serenade of Agony’, which featured Dan Swano under his well used alias Day Disyraah. A demo followed this up in 1995 before the band ceased to exist. Thirty years on and Maceration are back with the appropriately named sophomoric album ‘It Never Ends…’, released on CD and LP by Emanzipation Productions.
It should come as no surprise that maceration plays Death Metal in a decidedly old school manner. Sporting a somewhat Swedish sound, Maceration creates a layer of technical sounding guitar leads entwined with a further layer of groaning, ominous riffs that cast a darkness, an impenetrable gloom into the atmosphere. Giving the band’s sound further emphasis, crushing bass tones and solid, colossal drumming combine supremely to add weight to the bands already oppressive sound, and brand new vocalist Jan Bergmann Jepsen adds haunting, bowel trembling growls.
‘It Never Ends…’ has a surging, powerful quality to it that only increases in savage intensity of mind-bending shredding as it progresses. As demonstrated in tracks such as ‘Arcane Secrets’, Maceration are capable of creating blistering tracks of unrelenting fury whilst at the same time packing in an infinite amount of groove and rhythm, whilst other tracks such as ‘It Never Ends’ are far more hostile and unrelenting in their straight up heaviness of sound.
It feels like a band from the early 90’s are coming back every week these days and often this can feel like a bit of a cash in. However, there have been some really interesting releases from the old guard too, and ‘It Never Ends…’ falls firmly into that category.
(7.5/10 Marksson)
25/11/2022 at 12:04 am
The music may not be my cup of tea but that frankly fantastic album art would make a fantastic cover for a modern Lovecraftian book/game.