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CHASMDWELLER
Festering In Aural Trauma EP

Life After Death (2022)
Rating: 7/10

Here’s the latest release from this prolific Toronto, Ontario-based death metal act, and as expected it’s another rank heap of mouldy, doom-infused grimness.

This new scrap yard of filth is only 25 minutes long but the four slabs on offer do enough to quench the thirst. And from the off it’s the double-click drums that wrench the heart from the chest, and those vile, phlegm-ridden coughs just cry out for a decongestant.

Chasmdweller partake in pacier flurries for the most part, although these do at times blur into one blubbery mesh of brutality.

Opener ‘Divine Portals’ sets the tone, wading fast through squalid, congealed pools of sick. However, the title track speeds things up to the point of nihilist hammering and freezing wind tunnel blizzards of shed skin. It’s pounding, unrelenting and flesh flaying, combing familiar death metal wastes with flashes of Floridian turmoil laced with Finnish ghoulish delight and a lot in between.

‘Echo Into Nothingness’ is equally pulverising – extreme death metal whereby every instrument is at full throttle. Meanwhile, ‘Pantheon Of Psychotic Deities’ is even more torrential – a hyper hammer attack where the vocals shift rapidly from guttural gurgles to maniacal squeaks.

Chasmdweller’s latest bout of hellish hostility is not technical or flashy, but it batters the listener to a bloody pulp within minutes. Each wave of assault at times feels repetitive but punishing nonetheless.

Neil Arnold

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