PESTILENT DEATH "Chapters of Depravity"

PESTILENT DEATH

“Chapters of Depravity”

This review will be short and sweet. If you need a jolt of sick and diseased death metal, “Chapters of Depravity” is a quick dose of the plague. There is a miasma of rotting old Finnish death about this record and that’s a good thing if you flee digital drums and quantized guitar like a vampire flees garlic and sunlight. The smell of decay lingers about this trio like a week old corpse.

Surprisingly, these guys are from Los Angeles. They keep things simple, downtuned and pure, with overtones of GRAVE, AUTOPSY, ROTTREVORE and that Finnish aura I spoke of earlier. Sickening doom arises on “Chamber of Wretched Souls”, only to give way to a volcanic upheaval of rage on “Torturous Incantations” and “Pulsating Entrails”. The songs are short and to the point to start, but begin to lengthen as the album proceeds, with final track “Exhumation of Festering Cadavers” approaching the 7 minute mark.

The song titles tell you just about everything you need to know here. They even sample the news anchor speech from “Night of the Living Dead”, a sample that was old hat 25 years ago. But when a band is as true to the ways of ancient death metal as PESTILENT DEATH is, such cliches are a badge of honor. This really is death at its most reeking.

BLOOD HARVEST

PESTILENT DEATH