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Pestilential Shadows > Putrify > Reviews
Pestilential Shadows - Putrify

A prologue to something greater - 77%

iamntbatman, June 26th, 2013

Pestilential Shadows are something of an institution in East Coast Aussie black metal, along with related acts like Nazxul, Woods of Desolation, Austere and Drowning the Light. Take a stroll through the band's Archives page and you'll see that there's no small amount of inter-band incest going on in the membership department, either. The common thread through all of these projects is a depressive feel, though it's expressed quite differently from one band to the next, making them all interesting in their own ways.

Pestilential Shadows make use of a blast-heavy approach on this EP, with drawn-out sorrowful tremolo melodies. Treble-heavy, icy tone is used throughout, assuredly from the mid-period Burzum school of thought. Despite the extremely distorted guitar and the generally hazy, murky production that makes this sound more like some long lost side to the Hordanes Land split than something recorded in 2003, the bass actually makes its presence felt throughout the album. Due in part to the thick bass tone being so segregated from the guitar but perhaps more because the bass lines almost always meander and drift along with their own counter-melodies to the guitar. The instrumental title track is a very good example of this effect. It's a welcome addition to the release and shows a level of care and attention to detail that's not exactly common.

The material is in the exact same style of their following full-length, with very similar production. If you told me that it was all recorded in a single session I wouldn't doubt you, which actually makes the inclusion of this EP material as bonus tracks on Embrace After Death a really wise decision, with the resulting track listing working better than is usual for albums with previous EP's tacked on to the end. Nonetheless, these four songs stand on their own. While sometimes certain quirks of the production are quite endearing (it's hard not to like that second wave guitar tone, or the clear bass I mentioned earlier), other times I wish the band had advanced to the richer production values of their second full-length, which feature similarly scathing but much fuller guitar.

This is especially the case regarding the vocals and drums. Meririm's (aka Azgorh from Drowning the Light) rasps are spot-on, but the recording sounds like a cheap microphone was used, with some mic clipping and generally poor integration into the mix. They're not wet enough for the style, with a notable lack of reverb and delay. This was changed for the sophomore full-length, but they're definitely “demo-caliber” here due to the poor recording. The drums also fall victim, with the snare and cymbals coming through audibly but the bass drums being practically figments of my imagination.

The songwriting is also not quite what it could be. The band, at this early point in their career, had a solid foundation for how to start a song and how to keep it going once the themes had been established, but properly bringing things to conclusion was still a little beyond their reach on Putrify. Three of the four songs just sort of end abruptly, while the instrumental title track at least has a brief fade-out. Not the most crippling of problems, but it does hurt in the establishment of continuity throughout the release that usually benefits black metal of this style.

Putrify is a neat little EP that's well worth your time. Newcomers to the band might be better served looking into their full-lengths, but those who already know the band but don't have this material as bonus tracks on the debut album would be well rewarded in seeking this material out.