Review by Sonny for diSEMBOWELMENT - Dusk (1992)

In 1992 diSEMBOWELMENT released this three-track EP of material which would eventually show up again on the band's seminal "Transcendence Into the Peripheral" album, released the following year. The first two tracks, "The Tree of Life and Death" and "A Burial at Ornans" are quite rough and ready and are re-releases of rehearsal demos recorded in March of 1991, with only the last track "Cerulean Transience of All My Imagined Shores" being recorded specifically for release on this EP. I must be honest and admit that I have constantly struggled with the legendary status of "Transcendence Into the Peripheral" and there is something I find much more appealing here, particularly in the stripped-back versions of the first two tracks. Listening to the version of "The Tree of Life and Death" presented here alongside the later version, the drum sound is a lot less prevalent than it is on the album version, sitting more where I would expect it to in the mix of a doom metal album so that when the blastbeats hit they don't swamp everything else like they do on the album version. I think the generally more scuzzy production on the EP suits the material better as well, the heavy echoing effect of the album being unnecessary here, so that it sounds more natural than the album does. "Transcendence..." has a greater clarity for sure, but I am not convinced that that is to the benefit of the material because the foetid, abyssal nature of old-school death doom is really suited to lo-fi production values such as we have here on the EP.

OK, comparisons with it's younger and bigger sibling apart, what do we have here? Well, three fairly lengthy tracks of extreme metal that cover quite a few bases during their runtimes, from blasting death metal, through the hulking, ominous death doom that was taking off big time with certain sections of the early Nineties' extreme metal scene, to something even slower and more morbid-sounding, specifically during "A Burial at Ornans", which foreshadows the funeral doom of Thergothon's "Fhtagn-nagh Yog-Sothoth" demo, still six months in the future. The EP exudes a menace and primally evil aura heightened by Renato Gallina's abyssal demon's low, rumbling growl for a voice which may well induce nightmares in the mentally delicate. The skull-crushing weight of the simple, lumbering riffs may have been one of the heaviest things ever set down on tape up to that point in time, with a disgustingly filthy guitar sound that only adds to this gravitational magnitude. Both "The Tree of Life and Death" and "A Burial at Ornans" feel quite epic, involving multiple tempo changes during their runtimes, but epic in a huge, decayed and rotting carcass kind of way.

The closing track of both this EP and the full-length, "Cerulean Transience of All My Imagined Shores", sounds more like it's later incarnation, minus the opening ambient intro. Obviously recorded at a different time to the first two tracks, it has a much clearer production which gives the lead guitar a chiming, ringing tone in contrast to the deep, bestial roar that passes for vocals and the thundering basswork. The drums are further up the mix than they were on the other tracks, but not to the extent of the album and are perfectly suitable. This is the track more than the others which foreshadows the advent of Funeral Doom on the extreme metal scene, it slowing to barely a crawl at times, predicting the arrival of the likes of Esoteric, who were formed the same year as this came out. Coincidental? I think not!

I am really glad to have had the chance to check this out because it has solved the irksome puzzle as to why I never got on board with "Transcendence Into the Peripheral" when it appears to be right up my street. The answer is, because of the production, which I find to be incredibly jarring, especially the almost St. Anger-level annoying snare sound. The actual material, as presented here on the EP, is excellent, so that is the only explanation for my resistance to the later full-length.