All of a sudden, this plague-riddled year jumps into a record and then catapults itself out of my speakers. I do love anything that sounds this organic and makes ‘bleak’ look like a sunlit picnic in a country park. ‘Abysmal Invocation’ is a depraved tumble into a transcendental soup – the ingredients of which are diverse but unexpectedly aligned.
This debut from a Polish two-piece draws from two definite worlds – aggressive black metal and techno dance. Unusual but strangely effective. Both genres are wide-eyed and frantic, both are edgy and dangerous. The blast beats of blackness occupy the same crusty holes as the rhythm of industrial techno while hallucinatory, brain bludgeoning revolutions are ingrained in the riffs and the samples of both.
Helpfully, the creators of this hellish maelstrom do not try to splice the two together for the sake of it. Horrifying sub-bass grooves provide the invocations whilst gnarly, riffy and downright bloody lovely black metal chucks in the ‘abysmal’ bits. The whole is balanced and intriguing, sanguine and raw.
The one thing we haven’t had yet this year, or certainly not to any noticeable degree, is some good, old-fashioned genocide. Well, folks, here it is. Death by music. Love it.
8/10
https://deathepoch.bandcamp.com/album/abysmal-invocation
https://putridcultproductions.bandcamp.com/