Death metal royalty converges into a collection of twisting and rancid doom-soaked carnage in the form of Static Abyss.

STATIC ABYSS

The moniker may be unfamiliar but its members are anything but obscure comprising Autopsy’s Chris Reifert and Greg Wilkinson and joined by Necrot’s Chad Gailey on drums. All three members have other projects withStatic Abyss channelling their gruesome craft into rancid doom laden death metal. After two rapid fire releases in 2022 and 2023 this third album continues the band’s old school death ethos embellished with a slight quirkiness. Inevitably, there are going to be comparisons with their main bands.

THE DYING HUNT

The band’s earlier output swung from short brutal bursts to slower doom style soundscapes and Skull Blasted is exactly that when it opens with a sub-two minute explosion of gnarly death metal. Comparisons will be made with Autopsy here. However, within this short opener the band adds in eerie guitar hooks with a grim 80s horror flick tinge. Lobotomized continues that unease shifting into a slower crust flecked riff veering from groove to violence cohesively. Reifert’s vocals swing from deathly growls to serrated screeches all backed by the band’s unwavering groove worship.

ONCE A CORPSE (ALWAYS A CORPSE)

Crust surfaces most clearly on the title track. A slightly longer number, it is steeped by doom riffage and a creepiness that faintly recalls the sadly defunct US doom-death act Winter from the early 1990s. The way Reifert and Wilkinson fuse old school thuggery with nightmarish atmospherics is excellent. Once A Corpse (Always A Corpse) is very similar to Autopsy whose slow miasmic leads into explosive bedlam. Tempering the song with groove only adds to the Autopsy factor as the creepiness reappears with some off kilter guitar work. The mid-section of this album is packed with funereally slow soundbites as Bleeding In The Fog shows. Tuneful yet dissonantly putrid the song has an otherworldly morbidity amplified by the subtle tempo increase as a phenomenal riff break interjects ramping up the speed.

NOWHERE FOREVER

Every song lurches from viscous mid-tempo doom-death to outright annihilations. Nowhere Forever nails this extremely well. The suffocating doom laden grief being swept aside for chaotic drum violence. The shifting dynamics give the song a trippy nature bound by the funereal decay. The insertion of Defleshed And Forlorn serves to bring you back to reality with 80 seconds of unfettered ferocity feeding into the equally savage Volcanic Womb, where abrupt shifts from sorrow filled doom to filth-ridden ruptures.

DARKNESS AT THE END OF THE LIGHT

Closer Darkness At The End Of The Light is possibly the album most insidious song, a slithering doom soundscape stacked with dread. The borderline funeral doom crawl is weighted with eerie guitar hooks. There is a trudging beat mutating through subtle riff changes. Like all the songs, it is fractured with velocity bursts in adding to the resounding terror. It leaves you with a corrupting, unnerving atmosphere.

A festering triumph of grotesquery, this third chapter proves Static Abyss offer diseased infested filth choked on doom-death rot.

Static Abyss: Bandcamp

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