Dwelling Below. A band so obscure that they don’t have an entry on Metal Archives. . However the drummer/vocalist Jared Moran appears to currently be in every flipping death metal band in the US (though this one not listed…) and guitarist Nicholas Turner is a real slacker with only about a dozen or so. So what bassist Anthony Wheeler with only one other band to his name is doing with his time I don’t know…
Sarcasm aside, it simply points out that a debut release like this already comes with a whole warehouse of previous experience stacked up behind it so when opening tack ‘Attraction Vulgarity’ segues from almost cosmic intro to a slow near funeral speed of dark, hopeless death metal the fact that it is so coherent and determined should be no surprise. It is kind of slow and cyclical, the feel of just something vast descending in some spiral. It is chthonic in feel, utterly oppressive and with that hypnotic repetition that leave your brain lost and spinning.
We get four tracks only, all over eight minutes so a run time of just under a good forty minutes. What we don’t get is huge variation, but to be frank it isn’t that kind of album. There may be bursts of speed and atonal guitar streaks that hark back to Winter or Celtic Frost, more conventional old school death with rotten feet in Autopsy riffs and feel but it is probably best to take this as a whole. If you can. There are veins of technicality here too, a real sense of structure rather than utter chaos and degeneration; control if you will. Two members are in Acausal Intrusion and there are clear similarities though less rhythmic eccentricity. Their FB pages says ‘fully improvised’ which does raise some eyebrows but, hey its remarkably coherent and consistent for off the cuff jamming if that is the case.
It really is hard to say much more. And I don’t in any way mean that as an insult. It simply is forty minutes of slow, oppressive death metal with roots in all the bands mentioned. It is written and played by experienced musicians and it certainly has its place. It really isn’t bad at all and might well scratch that grim wintery fix of hopeless darkness.
Give it a shot.
(6.5/10 Gizmo)
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