Maybe it is how nice the weather has been, lately, but I haven’t been anticipating spooky season the way I normally do. It is almost halfway through October and I haven’t watched any horror movies this month. I am not feeling the gothic aura in the night air just yet, but maybe that is because I have been listening to Malicious Acropolis Unveiled by the Costa Rican death/doom quartet, Perishing. It is a heavy, haunting, slab of fetid flesh oozing and decaying in a sepulcher forgotten by time, only the mysterious offerings of things once living the only sign of visitors, and perhaps it has been satisfying my Halloween blood lust so well that I haven’t missed the gorefest of B-horror.
Perishing released their demo album, Lutum, last year to favorable internet buzz, displaying a knack for the kind of doom riffs that shake deep graves and the kind of cavernous death metal that splits them apart. Now, Malicious Acropolis Unveiled arrives as a proper debut, amplifying their extremes with greater nuance, atmosphere, and precision. Opening with the two-part “Autolysis”, Perishing immediately draws you into their grim wall of sound with the kind of tense doom Black Sabbath introduced on their eponymous song followed by some of the best death/doom I have heard since I discovered Rippikoulu and the Finnish death metal world. The riffs are hypnotic. The drums and bass create a dense fog of distorted rhythm, and J. Antonio Salas gives one of the most memorable death growl performances I have heard in a long time. As the first track transitions into the second, guitars drop out entirely, giving Salas room to scare the shit out of you over sparse drums and bass. This almost hits funeral doom levels of slow destruction, and given that this is a two part song, Perishing could certainly be capable of funeral doom’s long-form compositions.
However, when Perishing locks into their death metal groove, they bring it harder than most funeral doom bands. It is still largely mid-paced, but the culmination of the band members firing in lockstep devastation is the exact kind of sound that first attracted me to death metal, lighting intense and shrouded in arcane shrouds of dense HM-2 distortion. “Castle Of The Leached Body” fits nicely into the doomier side of the OSDM revival where acts like Thorn, Ossuarium, Worm, and Spectral Voice dwell. When “Las Ruinas del Palacio” gets rolling, it demands headbanging. Even the pacing on “Osedax (Devoured By The Cavernous Worm)’ makes the nearly ten-minute track stroll by with one memorable riff after another.
With Malicious Acropolis Unveiled, Perishing have firmly planted themselves as a band to watch out for, carrying the torch of death/doom forbearers deeper into the crypt. I haven’t heard a death metal album that satisfies as much as this in a while, like welcoming arms into the yawning chasm of death/doom, at once familiar and comforting as it is menacing, thrilling, and massive. This is a band I will definitely follow to the grave, a must listen for death/doom fans or anyone who likes their music to sound like haunted stone castles and the undead freaks who dwell within.
