Writhes in the Murk

Ævangelist is the experimental death metal brainchild of Matron Thorn and Ascaris, two American musicians, known for their work in Benighted in Sodom and Shavasana respectively. The band’s third full length album, Writhes in Murk, see the band continuing their uneasy and unsettling brand of filthy and maligned death metal; a sound that once resembled the likes of Portal and Mitochondrian. Where the band’s previous full length, 2013′s Omen Ex Simulacra, was an unstoppable aural assault which summoned disturbing nightmares and disfigured visions, Writhes in the Murk fails to raptly capture the mind and transport the subconsciousness to the dreaded depths of hell.

As disappointing as it is, Writhes in the Murk just falls flat on what it sets out to do. Sure, there are those who will glorify this as the new coming of death metal, because, hey, they used a fucking saxophone, but ultimately Writhes in the Murk does just what the title implies; the album wriggles around with occasional flashes of something brilliant only to fall back into convulsing fits that resembles what circles the drain after a night of tacos and cheap beer. When pushing the boundaries of extreme metal, there are certainly bound to be missteps and Writhes in the Murk serves as a one grand stumble. Everything that was so punishing, nightmarish and otherworldly on their earlier releases has been replaced with dredging fits of noise and misshapen plodding.

Perhaps that’s what is wrong with this album; there is no continuity, no cohesion. Take “Ælixir” for example, as the band twists and turns through noisy passages, some carnival-esque, some industrialized and mechanical and some just off the wall for the sake of being strange; it just does not fit together coherently. Sure this sounds like the stuff of nightmares and evil things, but it’s in the same way that most people would view nails on a chalkboard; it should only exist in scholarly discussion about things that we, as a civilized society, just don’t like. Sure, there are those that will argue that this is supposed to sound unsettling and uneasy, but Ævangelist’s last two full lengths show that the band can do just that without it sounding like a giant, heaping pile of shit.

The brief glimpses of Ævangelist’s past glories are short and fly past without so much as a sideways glance. “Halo of Lamented Glory” focuses on twisting rhythms that are full of downtuned riffing colliding with surging waves of percussion in a grand cacophonous wall of morbidity, but, in a flash it’s gone. These passages of monstrous death metal are so fleeting and few and far between that it really isn’t worth the effort it takes to find them strewn throughout the album. This unsettling and unnerving in the same way as stopping to use a heavily trafficked truck stop bathroom only to find the previous five tenants forgot about flushing. But, hey, there’s a fucking saxophone so that makes up for the other fifty-nine minutes where the band didn’t even try.

Written for The Metal Observer.