March 2021 Feature Release – The Horde Edition
So just like that we find that a new month is upon us which of course means that we’ll be nominating a brand new monthly feature release for each clan. This essentially means that we’re asking you to rate, review & discuss our chosen features for no other reason than because we enjoy the process & banter. We’re really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on our chosen releases so don’t be shy.
This month’s feature release for The Horde has been nominated by MacabreEternal. It's the classic 2014 sophomore album from Greek death metal outfit Dead Congregation entitled "Promulgation of the Fall".
https://metal.academy/releases/2498
OK so I've officially had my mind blown. I'm sure everyone knows that the more extreme end of death metal is where my absolute musical sweet spot is by now &, that being the case, "Promulgation Of The Fall" spends its entire duration incessantly pressing its finger right on top of my audio g-spot. It's cripplingly dark, relentlessly brutal & stunningly produced & executed. Sure there are some obvious influences here that Vinny has already gone into in his review however I'd suggest that Dead Congregation match them with ease here. In fact, the sheer precision gives Dead Congregation an edge over most of their peers. The drumming is outstanding, the deep death growls are suffocating & the atmosphere is situated right in the middle of a fog-filled, zombie-ridden graveyard at midnight. This record is the absolute epitome of what death metal aspires to be & I can't fault it. Unbelievable stuff!
For fans of Incantation, Immolation & Morbid Angel.
5/5
OK so I've officially had my mind blown. I'm sure everyone knows that the more extreme end of death metal is where my absolute musical sweet spot is by now &, that being the case, "Promulgation Of The Fall" spends its entire duration incessantly pressing its finger right on top of my audio g-spot. It's cripplingly dark, relentlessly brutal & stunningly produced & executed. Sure there are some obvious influences here that Vinny has already gone into in his review however I'd suggest that Dead Congregation match them with ease here. In fact, the sheer precision gives Dead Congregation an edge over most of their peers. The drumming is outstanding, the deep death growls are suffocating & the atmosphere is situated right in the middle of a fog-filled, zombie-ridden graveyard at midnight. This record is the absolute epitome of what death metal aspires to be & I can't fault it. Unbelievable stuff!
For fans of Incantation, Immolation & Morbid Angel.
5/5
I don't give this record enough attention and every time I play it I tell myself it should be played more regularly. A definite underrated record in death metal for sure and a band that just get overlooked all too easily.
This shit is incredible. For someone who doesn't like the more brutal side of Death Metal with the piercing open snare and hardly any melodies, the way this record marries insanely heavy Death Metal with extremely well placed portions of Death Doom is enough for even someone like me to realize how well put together this record is. While I'm not having a change of heart on how extreme I like my brutal side of Metal, this was fantastically paced through and through, especially "Schisma".
4.5/5
Sonny, if you haven't checked this out yet then I strongly suggest that you do. I think you'll love it.
I must admit, I'm looking forward to this one. I've got it lined up for this weekend.
I must admit to having a shit start to this weekend as I'm suffering from the side effects of my Corona jab last week, but all that has now become inconsequential as this muthaf***er blasts it's way through my brutalised earbuds, re-energising me as it does so!
As you all probably know by now, I have a somewhat on/off relationship with death metal, loving the old-school cavernous sound but shying away from the technical and overtly brutal sides of the genre. Some of it's proponents' obsession with sexualised violence I find particularly problematic. When I was originally discovering the genre I only really had the likes of Metal Hammer and Terrorizer as guides, so was subject to whoever their current darlings were, which meant whoever the labels were pushing at the time, resulting in some very unsatisfactory listening. When joining Metal Academy I would never have chosen The Horde as one of my original three clans, in fact even when considering a fourth clan I tended towards The Guardians. In recent times that has changed though, as through the featured releases and recommendations from others, I have discovered some truly awesome death metal releases such as Incantation's Diabolical Conquest and Blood Incantation's Hidden History of the Human Race.
To that list I can now add Dead Congregation's Promulgation of the Fall. The Greeks have perfectly captured Incantation's all-pervasive, cavernous sound that so appeals to me. The album varies from menacing, brooding death doom to an all-out, wall-of-sound aural assault that weirdly reminds me of Marduk's Panzer Division Marduk in it's blitzkrieg of an attack on the listener's ears - and all usually within a single track, the imperious Immaculate Poison for example. The riffs on this album are truly awesome and are of such intensity that if you listen to them too loudly I'm convinced they'll shake your teeth loose! Vocalist A.V. has the low-pitched growling down perfectly, but has less of a gurgling to his sound than some of the classic DM vocalists, with a drier, more dessicated timbre to his vocals - more Egyptian mummy than zombie!
So yet another awesome death metal discovery for me, thanks to MA (and Vinny in particular), that has only increased my affection for death metal as a genre and is helping me make up for lost time.
4.5/5
I would be lying if I didn't admit to being a little bit intrigued by this record; a death doom album with heavy emphasis on the "death" aspect. As many of you know, my background in this genre is heavily catered towards the atmospheric side, and I have been desperately looking for the Yang to my Ying (Swallow the Sun, My Dying Bride, etc.).
The first thing I thought of when I heard this record was how much it reminded me of Ulcerate. But whereas Ulcerate used this sound to create something that was... ethereal and dripping in post-metal, this record is a straight up death metal assault that is unforgiving with its intensity. There will be no soaring melodic guitar passages here. Everything is tuned down and the closest thing we get to a melodic lead is a mid range guitar solo, such as the one on "Quintessence Maligned". The way in which the ensemble is able to effortlessly transition back and forth between high octane death metal riffing/blast beats to painfully slow doom metal passages is super impressive. The transitions almost never feel rushed and the attention to detail on both is impeccable.
The sound of this album is pretty great. Being a death metal album, there is a certain unpolished level that persists throughout and it does make this quite interesting. The riffing, as mentioned before, is very low and is quite tepid about traversing anything higher than twelfth fret. I found that the bass is surprisingly dense and the kick drums are produced like ass; that is to say, they do not pierce over the rest of the mix. If I had to critique this in any way, it would be the lack of attention to the guitars when doing a "solo". They typically feel drowned by the rhythm guitars, which was a little disappointing.
But overall, add me to the list of people on MA pleasantly surprised by this. I understand that this isn't my forte, but I recognize talent when I hear it, and Dead Congregation are really good at creating claustrophobic, hellacious atmosphere.
8/10