It’s been just over a year since Static Abyss dropped debut splatter ‘Labyrinth Of Veins’ and shortly after that landed with a sickening thud we had ‘Morbidity Triumphant’ from macabre medical examiners Reifert and Wilkinson to contend with. The Autopsy room must be getting crowded with no shortage of patients to dissect and embalm, each one with a grizzly tale accompanying their demise. It’s up to us to gaze in like voyeurs once more, vomit bag at side as our deviant duo narrate their foul practices and organs are displayed and dissected with relish.
Of course you probably know exactly what to expect here, there’s only so many ways you can skin a corpse and this pair have been doing so with pinpoint precision for quite some time. Here we have eleven new tracks cast in the old-school vein and slewed out with sickening zeal as they steamroller and crawl in equal measures out the speakers. The titles are as inventive as ever, favourites painting a ghastly picture to the accompanying music include ‘Cathedral of Vomit’ and ‘Unrepentant Mutant Serpent.’ Both painting messy visions in the mind almost too horrible to contemplate, even if these two are at completely opposing ends of the slow / fast spectrum.
Starting off with battering drums and snarling unmistakable vocals the title track ploughs in before its tempered by a slowly uncoiling guitar riff snaking out like fog and completely changing the pace of the music on its head. Doom and death flout with each other as it all lurches away like a foul and bilious miasma, crusty coatings and gnarly scabs plucked out and thrown around with wild abandon. The second track ‘Wormskinned’ is cast off and the guitar tone is sharp and shrill, a bit like a cataclysmic siren strident and apocalyptic urging you to abandon the mortuary. This was an effect employed on the last album but I found it more evident over the tracks here and it constantly pursues the listener on the majority of them. Perhaps it’s a bit of a distraction, maybe they have come to rely on it a bit too much? The jury is out a bit on that but there’s no denying its focus is impossible to ignore.
From all out decimating slabs of fury to dismal slow stealthy crawls, tarred one and all by Reifert’s ghastly vocals, movement is ever changing and everything about this is suitably putrefying. Lurking in the shadows are a couple of bristling knife attacks in the form of shorter numbers 1-minute and under. That hallucinatory guitar tone still drenches the ‘Poisoned Limbs’ of the first of these and I have to admit I welcomed its respite on the headlong gallop of second, the rampant, punky ‘Dehumanised.’ By the time we reach eerie closer and self-named ‘The Static Abyss’ the album has pretty much flown by but I can’t help thinking that it hasn’t made quite the horrid stain of either of those mentioned at the start of the review. Perhaps this particular Face Of Death didn’t need a sequel quite so quickly?
(7.5/10 Pete Woods)
Leave a Reply