In recent years, many great metal bands have come out of Australia. The scene there is alive and thriving, giving us many bands that will hopefully be around for a while. One of the lesser known bands from the region is Faceless Burial, who play a style of old school death metal that takes some influence from Swedish death metal. Their first full length, titled “Grotesque Miscreation” released last year, and while it’s nothing mind-blowing, the album is a solid slab of death metal that fans of the genre should enjoy. This album opens with an unnecessary “Intro”, that uses an ambient build up to lead into the first real song, titled “Seeping Aberrational Fissures”, which has a very heavy intro, and begins the old school vibe that lasts the duration of the album. “Malignant Excavation” is a much faster, and well-written song that shows the band changing their pace to vary their sound a bit.
The old school vibes are very apparent as well. The title track, “Grotesque Miscreation” is next, and is the first example of the Swedish influence on this album. This song is not quite heavy on this song, but the writing stays solid and it doesn’t drift too far from the other material to seem like an outlier. This is followed up by “Unrelenting Member” which opens with a bass heavy intro before launching into a very straightforward death metal song that, while it feels very safe, is solid enough to hold its own. “Dominion of Swelling Flesh and Chaos” is next, and this one builds up before becoming very fast and heavy. This one features both a nice solo, and some nice riffs, and is a highlight on this album. This is followed up with “Transfiguration”, which opens slowly, before introducing a very groove heavy riff and overall is a song that features some of the best writing on here.
Up next is the brief “Useless Seed”, a song with a fast opening, and while it doesn’t do enough to stand out, it’s still a solid and well written track. “Excoriate” continues this trend of good death metal songs with a focus on riffs. “Black Ovulation” ends this album. This song is over seven minutes in length, easily the longest track on here, and is a very solid way to end the album. The band uses the length of this song really allow for the guitar to stand out, and they are able to do things that the shorter run time of their previous songs didn’t allow. Overall this is a solid album. It’s nothing amazing, and if you listen to this style of music frequently, will probably feel very familiar. However, this is still a solid album that fans of death metal should still examine for themselves.
Overall Score: 7.5/10
Review by Sam Hookom
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