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ASCENDED DEAD
Evenfall Of The Apocalypse

20 Buck Spin (2023)
Rating: 8.5/10

It’s been six years since Ascended Dead released their 2017 debut studio album Abhorrent Manifestation, but now the San Diego, California-based death metal act have finally returned with this second full-length Evenfall Of The Apocalypse. The quartet has clearly been dabbling with the darker side because this latest outing is one hell of a chaotic ride into the blackest abyss known to man.

This is the sort of album you need to prepare yourself for – thermal clothing, heavyweight boots, protective mask and plenty of water – because you are going to be struck by a mix of flamethrowers, violent blizzards, torrential hail, buckets of silt and a hellish frost and fury that’ll leave any unprepared human shredded.

Evenfall Of The Apocalypse certainly lives up to its title, being an utterly hammering, mayhemic and ghastly flurry dredged from the most underground of undergrounds with nasty wild riffs, cavernous remote vocal sneers, horrifying percussion and a general uneasy atmosphere so dense in its primordial darkness that you’ll need filters on your speakers to siphon out the harmful grit.

From opener ‘Abhorrent Manifestation’ to the closing title cut, there is barely time to breathe within the tumult as Jon Reider (vocals and guitar), Ian Lawrence (guitar), Kevin Schreutelkamp (bass) and Charlie Koryn (drums) pummel the listener with almost uncontrollable blasts of hot and cold air.

The relentless annihilation is a joy to behold on the third or fourth listen, but that initial experience is somewhat harsh and cruel on the senses as the likes of ‘Ungodly Death’, ‘Tantum Bellum’ and ‘Visceral Strike’ flail and scream with such blackened and possessed emotion that to simply call this death metal would be criminal. In fact, “demonic” and “bestial” are the ideal words one can apply to such a hostile release.

Ascended Dead have been waiting in the darkness to unleash this example of brutality and it was certainly worth the wait.

Neil Arnold

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