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Grave Miasma: Odori Sepulcrorum
12/12/13 || gk
The UK’s Grave Miasma released two highly regarded EP’s in 2009 and 2010 and slowly built up quite a following in the occult death metal world with some high quality music. This year saw the band finally release their full length debut and “Odori sepulcrorum” is a pretty solid statement of intent from the band.
“Death’s meditative trance” kicks things off with reverb drenched vocals and a thick murky atmosphere. The guitars are heavy and the song moves through tempos but it’s just the precursor. Things start to really take off with the immensely powerful “Ascension eye” which makes great use of atmosphere, changes in tempo and some pretty great song writing. From here on, “Odori sepulcrorum” is pretty much relentless. “έσχατος” starts dark and ominous before interchanging between fast dissonant riffs and some groovy mid-paced death metal. “Odoratus sepulcrorum” again uses different tempos to great effect and the drumming proudly wears its old school influences on its sleeve here. Album closer “Seven coils” creates an unsettling dirge like feeling with the use of a sitar at the start. The song quickly moves on, alternating between fast tremolo picking and mid-paced and twisted riffs. This is a powerful song to end the album.
The band is not afraid to experiment with the use of a sitar on one song and an organ that comes and goes every now and then but there is sameness to these songs and while it helps in building the atmosphere, it does become a bit hard to differentiate between songs.
Much like most of these death metal bands that combine the terms occult and old school, Grave Miasma create a murky atmosphere and a wall of, at times, impenetrable noise. The riffs are there to build on the atmosphere and not necessary to groove. Having said that, the band is quite adept at rocking out when the mood strikes them but this only happens occasionally. Through most of “Odori Sepulcrorum”, Grave Miasma creates a powerful, dark atmosphere that is impressive when it works. when it doesn’t work, things drag a bit resulting in passages on the album just becoming background noise.
Still, the complaints are few and far between. Grave Miasma to a large extent succeeds in delivering a fine death metal album and a logical successor to the “Realm of evoked doom” EP. Fans of ritualistic/ occult death metal and bands like Necros Christos and Grave Congregation should find plenty to like here. Grave Miasma is not yet quite at the level of those 2 bands but based on the evidence presented in “Odori sepulcrorum” they’re on their way.
- Information
- Released: 2013
- Label: Sepulchral Voice
- Website: www.gravemiasma.com
- Band
- Y: vocals, guitars, hammond organ, sitar
- R: guitars, flute
- A: bass
- D: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Death’s Meditative Trance
- 02. Ascension Eye
- 03. Ovation to a Thousand Lost Reveries
- 04. έσχατος
- 05. Odoratus Sepulcrorum
- 06. Interlude
- 07. Seven Coils
- 08. Ossuary
