Review by Rexorcist for diSEMBOWELMENT - Transcendence Into the Peripheral (1993)
Doom metal is practically a genre transitioning the act of digging deeper graves into sound, and the deeper you dig, the heavier you are. Disembowelment understood this, and it was clear the moment their guitars growled for the first time. While The Tree of Life and Death, the opener, starts off as a death metal song, its slowly draws you even deeper into dramatic slower pacing and growling guitars until you're not only covered in dirt, but you've sunk into it like an abyss, scared and turning your head as much as you can to avoid the worms you can't see.
My concerns regarding the risk of monotony within hour-long doom albums was at least temporarily countered with the gothic doom sounf of Your Prophetic Throne of Ivory. It brought a completely new hypnosis to the album, vaguely reminiscing My Dying Bride while using its cleaner production in tandem with black metal riffs during the midsection, and incorporating slow masculine chanting to set a blueprint for what would become funeral doom. So without these guys, there might've been no Esoteric or Evoken. While the first track was beautiful, the second was more creative.
Another surprise overtook me as the noisiest shit you'll ever hear capitalizes on the black-death riffs of Prophetic Throne and begins the third track: Excoriate. There's no rhythm of any kind at first, so while the atmosphere was incredible, I can't say I'm thoroughly impressed with that decision. But then the instrumentation gets slower, deeper, more artistic and just as horrific as the opener. It feels to me that this was an early influence for one of my favorite black metal bands: Cabinet. The cleaner gothic guitars return for a much scarier composition than the hypnotic elements shown in Prophetic Throne. In fact, the industrial and quirky methods used to bring out the atmosphere are ringing heavily of the album Children of God by Swans. It's a shame this song started out with such a rhythmless beginning, otherwise this would be a perfect song. It could be said that the beginning was part of the experimental nature, but I feel like it could've still been performed more artistically. And lo and behold, this is how the song ends as well, which is slightly disappointing despite being extraordinarily heavy.
Nightside of Eden is a relatively short one, and I noticed that when looking at the tracklist. My first thought was: starts acoustic and probably stays that way. I was right, but this doesn't mean it wasn't weird. The beautiful whispers of a female and a strange ghostly instrumentation give it a mythical feel that takes me deep into a golden sunlit forest where a magic well with a statue of Aphrodite awaits. That is literally what I pictured, dark green leaves, birds and everything.
Our longest song, A Burial at Ornans, starts out how it should, superslow, gruesome in its haunting buildup, slow and tribal in its percussion, etc. While it's a great sound, it gets to be a bit much for me overtime, which means the band went past their limitations before taking a complete 180 into blackened death territory, which is a fine change but isn't a perfect situation. In fact, it's a little jarring. Great sound aside, there are many more creative 10+ minute slow-metal songs out there.
The Spirits of the Tall Hills starts out by using the clean gothic guitars in tandem with blast beats to create a faster and almost blackened sound that stands out from the other songs. Eventually, the percussions and feedback go right into the black area while the guitars stay the same, creating a strange but soothing post-metal vibe. There is enough mutation throughout the song to allow it to recycle elements via new combinations of the group's compositions. Eventually, the percussion takes a big backstep, allowing the gothic guitars to go into surreal but slow psychedelia before diving right back into the speed for one final epic burst.
The final track is Cerulean Transience Of All My Imagined Shores, and it's more deep and mystical throughout its run. After the harp intro, we once again see familiar elements recycled to create a different kind of experience. The middle section feels a bit quiet and tame, but it only gets a little louder in the end, which means the album doesn't really end on the big bang it needs.
Glad I finally got through this one. It certainly did set up several new standards for doom metal, even if it needed to flesh out a couple of things. Totally worth the hour.