At a time when I got into death metal and learning the subgenres at a young age, I often find myself just appreciating the essences and escaping from reality in which I have never felt so appreciative to now say death metal changed the landscape of things and is the genre I felt it really inspired me to keep accelerating. Meet Abscession, a upcoming HM-2 Swedish death metal band that I’ve seen across on social media discussing this band and hearing the praise they’ve gotten due to their distinctive sound and hearing the buzz they’ve been getting. Truth be told, I’m now a fan immediately after hearing this album, Rot Of Ages which is the latest offering from Abscession and is released through the amazing label of Transcending Obscurity Records.
Now if you know HM-2 and the legacy Swedish death metal bands have created over the years, you’ll know what to fully expect out of this record front to back. From shimmering melodies, crust punk signatures, heart-stopping breakdowns and a production so thick and dense sounding, this is one of the absolute best albums I’ve heard in quite sometime. Everything Abscession has created musically about this album tells the tale of how incredibly detailed, catchy and hook driven their arrangements are is absolutely surrealistic. Between the meat and potatoes styled guitar tones, the brilliant, emotive melodic death metal soundscapes and a gratifying, crushing, and raunchy musical instruments bringing a explosive dynamic to the album’s presentation a plethora of bringing some German death metal structures to the mix, the members from Abscession have done such a fantastic job portraying their strengths in creating a incredible listening experience front to back which makes the songwriting and experimentation on the album definitely captures such wonderful things that is meant to be heard beginning to end.
Just when you want to headbanging endlessly on tracks such as When The Guillotine Falls, Dead Man’s Hate, Prometheus Unbound and Theater of Pain for example not only you’ll get usage of keyboard melodies that bring such emotional and atmospheric passages to make the songs feel imperious, but then you’ll also get some progressiveness on the secondary half of the record where they borrowed influences from other bands in the genre including Bloodbath, Wombbath and Edge Of Sanity in which Abscession’s identification has been fully met upon my own wildest dreams to hear such encapsulating and memorable pieces of Swedish death metal. Rot Of Ages released not only one of the best albums of 2021, but it will go down in the record books to be a modern day classic for years to come.
Overall Score: 9.5/10
Review by Jake Butler
