Sinful Accession

The very concept of horror is a universal part of the human experience, it knows no borders, there is no land that it can't reach given the right amount of time and change of circumstance. For the former Soviet Union and its now liberated satellites throughout the Eastern Block, heavy metal itself was something of a latecomer compared to that of Western Europe and beyond. Nevertheless, one of the more enduring curiosities of the region is how relatively early and how near instantaneously Mother Russia got her act together on the death metal front. At the onset of 1993, when death metal was arguably at its peak in popularity in the U.S. and Europe, the first noteworthy smatterings of raging death metal came from the Czar's former nation courtesy of Death Vomit and Graveside. While the former was largely based in the plainer orthodoxy of Obituary, Brutality and Malevolent Creation, Graveside took a somewhat more technical and dense one that was closest in comparison to Deicide's first two albums, but also informed by the chaotic tendencies of Morbid Angel and the keyboard-driven aesthetics that Death's Human and Nocturnus' The Key had just brought to the forefront.

In just about every sense imaginable, Sinful Accession showcases an up and coming Russian death metal sound that has already caught up with its western competition, using just about every then familiar tool of the trade and ending up with a highly ambitious result. Famed producer Evgeniy Trushin, who had just previously worked with early Russian thrash metal outfits Коррозия Металла and Мастер, lends his skills to this opus and winds up all but perfectly emulating both the signature Scott Burns guitar sound as heard on then recent Deicide and Cannibal Corpse offerings, as well as the deeper and more atmospheric aesthetic of Tom Morris to create a near perfect amalgam of the classic old school death metal sound. The music itself follows a very similar hybrid approach of these two different sounds, as vocalist Igor Logachev puts on a nasty subterranean growling display that right down the middle between Chris Barnes and Glen Benton, whereas said front man's keyboard work carries both the spacey qualities of Nocturnus and the choir-like affect of Darkthrone's Soulside Journey, lead guitarist Roman Zybin's solos follow the streaming chaos of Trey Azagthoth and the combined riff work of he and Sergey Grishin display some of the technical/progressive tendencies of Death's early 90s work along side the thrashing Cannibal Corpse and Deicide tendencies.

From beginning to end, this album follows in a sort of quasi-conceptual fashion, as each song effortlessly flows into the next and the combination of influences at play are consistently reaffirmed at their obligatory place and time. At times things get a bit more theatrical and hauntingly atmospheric, as on the keyboard-heavy elements that lead into the opening bruiser "Voice Of Devastation" and occur in an intermitten fashion on "Prayersick" and "Pray, Pray To Your Asshole Mortals" (something truly gets lost in the translation of that song title from Russian to English) it almost sounds like the heaviest parts of Beneath The Remains were merged with selected keyboard tracks off King Diamond's Conspiracy. Then again, crushing riff monsters like "In The Name Of Incarnation Of The Great Faith" and "Confession" prove to be far more concise, blast happy affairs that might have been heard on Tomb Of The Mutilated or Legion had they been a tad less busy. That's really the greatest of this album's many charms, it manages to be both atmospherically nuanced yet also an unmitigated hammer to the skull every time the riff work chimes in, and for all the peripheral additives provided by the occasional keyboard or clean guitar interlude, this is a riff-driven fit of aggression through and through.

Most consequential offerings of this level of magnitude tend to be followed by multiple successive offerings, but sadly longevity was not something that would come to define Graveside, nor many of their early Russian death metal pioneer contemporaries like Succubus or Necrocannibal for that matter. It's truly a sad eventuality as had Graveside seen a comparable number of follow ups as that of Deicide or Morbid Angel, one might be tempted to speculate that these death-obsessed Slavs might have gotten ahead of said bands stylistically given how quickly they managed to catch up. It's the sort of compelling package of archaic brutality (by today's standards) and technical nuance that puts it in a class all by itself, and probably the only thing denying it the same degree of legendary status as the likes of Deicide and Altars Of Madness is that it came out in 1993 instead of '89 or '90, and also that it was not heavily distributed outside of Russia until about a year ago when GS Productions put it up on Bandcamp. It's a national treasure for the Russian death metal scene which has since grown tremendously, but it's also an unsung classic to the outside world and us westerners would do well to give it its long overdue time in the sun.