Desolate Shrine - The Sanctum of Human Darkness

In the last few years (or maybe it has been a decade already) a certain kind of sound started to take hold in death metal. It's the sound that comes out of deep caverns where cambrian fossils play guitars that sound like a swarm of flies mixed with clacking of septic tank hatch doors. Also known as Incantation worship or New York death metal in general or just new old school death metal. There are a lot of bands that do this sort of thing now and a lot of them sound the same. I find them to  be really fun to listen but they can get stale after a while. I've been loving most of these bands but in a very biased way because I like the sound of it. I don't really care if it's the same thing all over again with each new band that I stumble upon next.

Desolate Shrine is one of those new bands that incorporated this sound or style into their music. It's a relatively new band from Finland that released their debut in 2011 called Tenebrous Towers. Tenebrous Towers was a good album but it felt like they were just flexing their muscles with it and warming up. You know, just to prove they can do this sort of music. A year later they released The Sanctum of Human Darkness and everything sank into place. The music finally took its desired form and the band blossomed in full.

The album feels conceptual but that might be just my interpretation. Keeping up with the Satanic theme of the album the music is fittingly bleak, eerie and filled with malice. The riffs are not "fun" nor energetic. Each song is a slow, distorted pummeling of your senses with incredibly deep guitar tone and overall production. They do change the pace every now and then, speeding things up and those parts are especially great. The pacing is done well on most of the songs so when the fast parts kick in they feel really tight and rewarding to listen. The album does suffer at times, some songs feel like they're just a collection of unconnected riffs and such but for the most part it's really good. They did improve on that in the next album which came out this year although they both sound very similar.

Overall it's a great death metal album mixed with some doom as well so if you're into this sort of sound I'd suggest checking it out but if you're not into this cavernous stuff you'll be bored to tears.

Get.