Those Who Crawl and Slither Shall Again Inherit the Earth

This 2010 demo from Icelandic band Svartidauði (the name means "Black Death" in English) is a good introduction to the band and features a track that would end up on an album named after it. "Flesh Cathedral" rockets out of the starting gates with blast-beat percussion aggression, noisy scratch guitar battery and dry croaking voices proclaiming the arrival of the apocalypse and mass death in the form of a cathedral of decay. The music is a mix of black, doom and post-metal with plenty of melodic passages and the entire song infused with an atmosphere of burning fire and sheer despair. There is an intensity present that reminds me of Deathspell Omega who deal in similar bleak and uncompromising subject matter and it's quite possible the Icelanders have learned a thing or two from DSO. They mix rhythms, melodies, riffs and different speeds within the one song, allow for moments of searing intense and bleak ambience, and create a soundscape of continuous chaos with impossibly fast music that darts about from one thing to the next with technical precision.

"The Perpetual Nothing" invites listeners to ponder the reality of a universe of sheer emptiness and indifference to the fate of humanity. After a relatively tranquil introduction, guitars and drums erupt with renewed fury and as they careen wildly all over the joint, there is a real sense of panic with every single spot of space filled with hysterical crazed strings and skins beaten hard. About halfway through the track, the music becomes more settled with a fairly sedate pace and simpler riffs, allowing the dry death-rattle howls which have been going on continuously in the background space to be heard. The music does speed up again and maintains its pace from then on all the way to the end.

The entire recording can be very dense and overwhelming and repeated hearings might be needed for listeners to appreciate what the band has done. The music is more controlled than at first it appears and the energy and anger are constant throughout the two tracks: this surely requires a great deal of concentration and endurance on the musicians' part. The production here is fairly clear and gives the music a cold and sharp edge. The demo gives the impression of a dark sinister force inhabiting the music and especially those drier-than-dry death-rattle vocals that simply have to be heard to be believed.

If these guys can maintain the energy levels that their style requires, they ought to be a major force in black / doom metal.