If, like me, you follow certain labels because they release top quality albums by an assortment of different artists then you probably have a penchant for this US label’s roster. This debut full length by UK’s Ageless Summoning is absolutely no different, and in terms of quality is one of the best albums coming out from the label. The band may be relatively new but the band members have their hands in a variety of acts both current and past and that experience makes its presence known on this astoundingly brutal, yet intricately constructed debut. The grim nightmarish album cover also adds to the uncompromising atramentous violence that awaits you on these ten tracks of guttural grotesquery.

‘Usurper Of The Void’ kicks things off and immediately you are immersed in a quagmire of horrifying drum work, hideously malevolent vocals and guitar work that situates the band within the filth riddled style of Morbid Angel. With an inhumanity that belies its musicality the opener has a penetrating monstrousness that eases the track, and album, into modernity with its incalculable terror. ‘Descent From The Infinite’ follows and far from allowing any deviation the album pulverises without remorse as here the tune has a ‘Blessed’ era Morbid Angel vibe going on though in terms of newer acts there are similarities to Desolate Shrine, Disma and to some degree Deeds Of Flesh due to the opacity of the sound and thick sludge wall of bass.

There is a pervading horror about this album, delivered by the riffing but also the vocals and the way the album listens like one continues devastating opus. ‘Among The Worms’ mauls with its shadowlike bludgeoning crafted by the riffs but also the insane intensity of the other instrumentation plus those cavernous vocals. At nearly seven minutes the title track unleashes a pyroclastic onslaught, with gradations in speed coupled to intermittent blast waves, something the album uses sparingly but with devastatingly effective results. At times I was left bewildered at just how dense the sound is, yet possesses a clarity and mix that ensures every aspect of the sound is well defined as the much quicker ‘Incarnate Nothingness’ offers a sadistic assault.

Eerie and entrenched in a doom-death stature ‘Retribution Eternal’ plunges the album into a funereal aura, dramatic and tempered by an enshrouding malignancy the song is enhanced by various noises that link into the short bridging interlude of ‘Invocation’ before the album concludes with the awesome ‘Salvation In Ash’. Closing your album with a seven minute plus epic is nothing new but what they’ve created here is something that emanates from the bowels of the earth. An abrasive opening sees the guitar sound seemingly elevate slightly before a metaphoric sonic sink hole opens up and drops everything into a miasmic oblivion.

Whilst I have referenced a few acts in this coverage, this is by no means a copycat of any of the bands I’ve mentioned ‘Corrupting The Entempled Plane’ is stacked with punishing finesse and balanced by a brutalising technical proficiency in all departments. Stunning debut!

(9/10 Martin Harris)

https://www.facebook.com/agelesssummoning

https://darkdescentrecords.bandcamp.com/album/corrupting-the-entempled-plane