Decrepitaph - Condemned Cathedral

February 9, 2009

Reviewer: Jesse

Razorback was busy in 2008 and capping off the year for them was the release of Decrepitaph’s debut, Condemned Cathedral. From Dallas, Texas (by way of Massachusetts), Decrepitaph’s aim seems to be to revive (or continue the revitalization of) the old-school death metal sound that lied dormant for about a decade.  I say “continue” because over the past few years, more and more bands have been returning to and paying homage to the death metal of old which is clearly a good thing in my eyes or at least, it can be.

Condemned Cathedral is a heavy and dirty slab of under-produced, filthy death metal.  The guitars grind and buzz away any polish that might even attempt to sneak their way into this recording.  A muffled Sunlight Studios sound would be a fair comparison.  Crushing and thick to the point of ridiculousness.  It’s very overwhelming and makes it nearly impossible to even make out the bass.  There is however an occasional lead or slight melody thrown in from time to time.  The growls from the singer are fairly standard except that they added an echoing effect that lasts the entire album.  The drumming is very competent and fits in well despite any real enthusiasm. 

When all of those pieces are put together, we have a fairly mediocre and paint-by-numbers mid-90s death metal album.  Everything just seems so stale and devoid of personality almost as if it were written simply for the sake of being “old school.”  As mentioned earlier, the guitar sound is absolute overkill and completely limits any kind of variation.  The attempts at a solo or some kind of melody mixed above the rhythm guitars are weak and amateurish at best and honestly distract from the song in which it would have been better off without.  The singer is about as average as average can be.  No force or drive or aggression and the echo just makes his limitations stand out more.  They do at times slow it down to the point of almost coming off as doomy and it’s these instances in which I think the album does shine temporarily. 

What I hear when I listen to Condemned Cathedral is one of those hundreds of 90s death metal albums that got lost in the sea of mediocrity when just about every death metal band was being signed that inevitably stretched the genre so thin that everyone stopped caring.  The difference between then and now is that many of those bands were just limited in their resources and what came out wasn’t a fabrication; it’s just the way they sounded.  If you’re going to intentionally degrade your sound to mimic that era, at least be somewhat interesting.  People seem to be so thirsty for this style these days that they’re willing to accept anything.  As someone who was there during that “boom,” I remember just as many monotonous, snooze-fests as I do inspired, original and lively bands and we really don’t need a revitalization of the former.

Release Date: December 18, 2008
Label: Razorback Records

TRACK LISTING

1. Possessed By Blasphemy
2. Unholy Crucifixion
3. Condemned Cathedral
4. Worship the Dead
5. Morbid Rituals
6. Dawn of the Zombie
7. The Labyrinth of Bones
8. Desolate Obscurity
9. A Burial in Hell
10. Crawling Out From the Crypt

Total playing time: 49:22

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