Disentomb - Sunken Chamber of Nephilim

Try to imagine lying on some picturesque beach down under, with happy kangaroos bouncing through the meadows and little happy children flouncing through the morning air, crisp and fresh like the freshly dewed grass that surrounds your locale…idyllic, yes? Well, forget that little jaunt into utopia, because Disentomb is playing a few blocks away and the ugliness and rage that ceases to exist in your world permeates the air in ours! Is it enough to mark the band as an up-and-comer worth noticing?

Australia’s death metal machine offers up its debut album in the form of Sunken Chambers of Nephilim, a not-so-carefree malignancy on the pancreas of death metal. Albeit formulaic and somewhat customary, the album is not without its merits. I like the more brutal down-tempo shellacking in songs like “Cystic Secretion”, a happy little ditty about…well…you can figure it out as they pose a threat to any and all people within earshot. I must admit to not being a huge fan of the guttural vocals that are often undecipherable and too close to just noise for me, but when a track like “Suspended on His Symbol of Suffering” batters your head with its intense crawling through the senses you can’t help but feel fulfilled in giving up your nearly half-hour of life for this cause. It’s far from unique or original, that’s a given these days, but it’s quite good for its own sake. The title track has some interesting melodies in it, and while I find some of the arrangements too familiar for serious death-heads, they certainly are entertaining throughout if you’re new to the arena or simply stagnating in this one area for a while.

I especially like how the songs are not long epics of death metal design that drag on far too long or fail to stimulate you past he two-minute mark; these tracks are in and out fairly quickly, leaving you satisfied at just the right points. With some well-crafted volatility contained within the span of 10 tracks, Disentomb begins its existence on a somewhat fine note with a first offering that has all of the subtlety of a dozen hopped-up alley rats racing around your room in search of an opening in the wall. It’s not going to rewrite the book of death metal on any level, but for a short-and-violent foray into the ‘dark side’ of our genre, the band is definitely worth a listen. Let’s hope the formula here is amplified on the next release, marking the ground with even more fervent and quality music.       

Release Date: December 6, 2010
Label:  Amputated Vein /
Obsidian Records

TRACK LISTING

1.  Purity Severed by the
     Antediluvian
2.  Inhaling a Vomitous Iniquity
3.  Cystic Secretion
4.  Suspended on His Symbol
      of Suffering
5.  Sunken Chambers of Nephilim
6.  Abhorrent Expansion
7.  Subterranean Burial
8.  Incinerating the Angelic
9.  Gutted
10.  Impaled Upon the Throne

Total playing time:  29:20

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*Comments:

Reviewer: Chris

February 16, 2011