Unveil in the Abyss

Desecresy is a long-running solo death metal project from Tommi Grönqvist, the guitarist of "cavernous" death metal progenitors Slugathor. With that out of the way, let's talk about the massive sound that is Unveil in the Abyss. This is a mammoth death metal album, one that certainly will appeal to fans of Slugathor but also Corpsessed, Cruciamentum, and Cerebral Rot (plus other bands who coincidentally start with "C"). I love this tone - when done right, it's totally overwhelming in a very good way. Combine that with some relatively clean leads like the beginning of "Rivers of the Nether Realm" and midway through "Necrolevitation", and you've got a death/doom album that's way more than just down-tuned tritones.

Desecresy is contemporary death/doom, but it bears stating that this isn't the kind of "death/doom" that's synonymous with "death metal played at quarter-speed". The breakdowns have purpose - and often sound incredible. The final two minutes of "Echo Beyond Time" are some of the best minutes in 2022 death metal so far, and "Rivers of the Nether Realm" opens with and eventually bridges to hard-hitting, fast-paced ripping power chords that transition to a mid-paced session rather than an immediate fall into half-time. "Cult of Troglodytes" dips a bit into the 2018 cavernous cliche, but at least it wears well its title.

There's one significant flaw, one that I thought was because my computer downloaded the digital files weirdly. The fourth and fifth tracks strangely dip hard in fidelity, suddenly losing much of the stereo sound as if they were down-sampled to 96 kilobytes per second. This isn't just my files: the Spotify version and Xtreem Music's Bandcamp pages have the same issue, as does any YouTube rip I was able to find. I don't own a physical version, so I'm not sure how that would sound, but it appears that at the very least the digital files have this strange production loss. The fidelity goes back up on the sixth and seventh tracks, which makes me wonder what exactly happened during the mixing of this album.

It's a shame - that issue kneecaps an otherwise awesome death metal release. I just find myself skipping those two tracks every time I listen to Unveil in the Abyss because the production change is so sudden - that's over 13 minutes of a 43 minute album. Both of the tracks are as good as the rest of the album in songwriting, but I can't look past that issue.

So if you check out Desecresy (which you should) and this album (which you should, too), just keep that in mind. This would easily be an 80%-ish album if the production drop didn't exist.