There’s some debate among metalheads as to what subgenre is the least flexible in sound. In my experience, death metal often pulls the short straw and is deemed the most set in its ways, but that’s not totally true, is it? Death metal can exist in many forms! Some of it is melodic and catchy, or full of technical flash and flair. Some bands adopt a more hardcore or slamming brutal approach and produce pure distilled mosh fuel. Or hell, some bands take the sound to the cosmos with progressive aspirations. And then there are bands like Ossuary, who are laser focused on evoking the ‘death’ in their genre tag and throw everything they have on that mordant descriptor.
Building off the growing buzz from their demos and EP, Ossuary has finally arrived in full- length form with their debut album Abhorrent Worship. Fittingly enough for a band from Wisconsin (I will never miss you, Manitowoc County), the approach Ossuary takes to death metal is extremely dark and miserable. Sonically, it’s fairly easy to trace the roots of their sound to beloved classic bands. The dire grooves and chugging muted riffs feel redolent of Bolt Thrower at their most grim and war-torn, while serpentine malevolent tremolos and the odd dip into full-on doom signpost an appreciation for the sounds first spawned by Incantation. The band never really speeds up beyond a mid-paced trudge, and the songs all run on the longer end to let the atmosphere properly spread and fester.
I’ll warrant, that’s nowhere near a unique approach these days, but I’ll be damned if Ossuary doesn’t do that sound glorious justice. Abhorrent Worship is monolithic in its sepulchral crawl, and there’s not a single song that fails to deliver on Ossuary‘s mordant mission. From the opening ambience and pained chords of “Volitional Entropy” to the gloomy drone following the last charge of “Barren Lamentation”, the album is steadfast in its deathly atmosphere with nary a glimmer of light or air to breathe in its churning morass.
One of my favorite things about Abhorrent Worship, after multiple listens, is the sense of restraint and pacing that Ossuary shows. “Volitional Entropy” kicks off the album on a doomy lurch, followed by the more pounding groove of “Inborn Scourge Unbound”, which in turn is swept away in the pyroclastic flow of “Forsaken Offerings (To the Doomed Spirit)” with its molten tremolo riffs. It takes until the fifth track of a sixth track album (the punishing “The Undrownable Howl of Evil”) for something akin to a guitar solo to really cut through, and it’s genuinely gripping in its eerie simplicity. I may be mistaken, but that song is also the one instance of a full-on blast beat I can recall, with most of the drumming being a steady beat with some slick double bass work at most. Conversely, Ossuary never dips too far into funereal doom pacing until the intro of closer “Barren Lamentation”, making sure the pace never gets too sluggish to risk listeners losing focus.
It all works out to an album that never once sacrifices feel for flash, and that’s a genuine treat among modern death metal. I also feel a need to point out that guitarist Izzi Plunkett’s vocals throughout the album work wonderfully to complement the vibe of Abhorrent Worship. Her tone is much less the ocean floor-scraping gutturals you’d expect from such a band and are more of a strangled midrange approach that kicks up to black metallic snarling as needed. It helps the vocals cut through the dense tumult of the instruments perfectly. It’s also worth noting that the album cover is just damn cool and fits the mood of the album perfectly. Alongside a mix that’s tasteful old school and murky but decipherable, and Abhorrent Worship is a pitch perfect love letter to the darkest depths of old-school death metal.
Would I argue that Abhorrent Worship is perfect? Probably not, I do feel like it’s an album that demands a front to back listen partially because the songs do sometimes feel a little samey at times. It’s also not an album I would put on for a quick fix of riffs or for anything that could qualify as ‘catchy’, but as a guy who got into death metal when the caverncore vibe was the order of the day, Ossuary still hooked me like the figure on the album art, and I can’t deny how perfectly they capture the vibe of true death metal with the emphasis on ‘death’. For anyone burned out on the clearer productions, trendy genre blending, or mosh pit appeal of today’s most popular death metal, Ossuary is a soothing balm and a trip to the nearest abandoned, crumbling mausoleum all in one. Forget all that modern flash and succumb to Abhorrent Worship and its churning atmosphere. Just don’t forget to bring a flashlight, it’s very dark down there.
