Order Of Decay

***Mysterious Scottish dark doomed death metal behemoths Order of Decay emerge with their crushing debut album Mortification Rites, a blackened necrotic specter of omnipotent, atmospheric, slow-moving death. Humongous in its scope and vision, and inexorably annihilating, Mortification Rites sees the anonymous collective construct massive and enveloping visions of moribund decay, conjuring premonitions of total doom across a forty-six minute, eight-track death-devoured sonic abyss. The album's immense and lightless aura is brought forth by an onslaught of crushing and dissonant guitars enshrouding a monolithic, telluric rhythm section. Keyboard-laden soundscapes and necrotic vocal proclamations feed its imposing aura further, shaping a sonic beast of truly otherworldly traits. The work falls beautifully within the framework of the recognizable and iconic contemporary UK death-doom and dark death metal scene, following excellently in the footsteps of bands like Indesinence, Esoteric, Pantheïst, Grave Miasma and Cruciamentum, with its dismal atmospherics and oppressive onslaughts of dark, dissonant crushing, yet melodic guitar work. But Mortification Rites also brings a whole new breadth of darkness and destruction to the platter, often branching out into the same realms of infernal sonic maelstrom we've seen from Finnish dark death metal acts like Desolate Shrine, Maveth and particularly Krypts, to bring forth its own vision of absolute, abyssal death metal bedlam.