I’ve said this in a review aeons ago, one person projects are some of the sickest, and best groups in music today. Alchemy Of Flesh is a one man band based out of Athens, Georgia by songwriter, lyricist, drummer, bassist and everything else Mr. Tim Rowland. Ageless Abominations is the debut full-length released on Redefining Darkness Records and when I dived into the album and paid attention to the lyrics, I noticed there’s references of themes I’m heavily into. From horror, video games and HP Lovecraftian comic horrors and the ancient ones, I had to immediately jumped right on the bandwagon and became a fan almost instant.
Musically, this is like a lovechild if you took early Morbid Angel and Hate Eternal put it in a blender with a nice balance of technicality, groove, melodicism and old school death metal, you would get Alchemy Of Flesh in one description. Now, I will say for a one person project Tim’s ability to do everything himself in producing, recording, playing instruments and everything he does stylistically is out of bounds and therefore huge props and respect is given to him where its due. Songs such as Slipgates to Annihilation, Pain Primordial, and Opener of the Way gives a atmosphere so thick and dense sounding it almost sounds exactly like the late 80’s when Morbid Angel was doing Altars Of Madness or even Domination on how doomy sounding the tracks are which gives it life and his wonderfully established pieces of music does provide a doomy and monstrous atmosphere using death metal signatures while incorporating doom metal styled melodies which is absolutely flawless in my opinion.
Guitars feel distorted, tempos are faster, meaner and groovy at times, drums provide a nice balance of speed and normal melody-centric sections which almost gave me a Deicide or Entombed-esque vibe on how unsettling the sections are provided but for what it is I think the patterns are smothered very nicely. For a debut album, Ageless Abominations is a album that has it all from the doomy, old school flairs and modern-day death metal sound to the progressive, melodic and technical side of things this is a record that needs to be heard more more once to appreciate Tim Rowland’s contributions and I can’t wait to see what lies beneath for the next material.
Overall score: 9.0/10
Review by Jake Butler
