{"id":103186,"date":"2024-05-03T00:00:52","date_gmt":"2024-05-02T23:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=103186"},"modified":"2024-05-15T14:06:40","modified_gmt":"2024-05-15T13:06:40","slug":"album-review-unearthly-rites-ecdysis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/album-review-unearthly-rites-ecdysis\/","title":{"rendered":"UNEARTHLY RITES – Ecdysis (2024) | Album \/ EP Reviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

UNEARTHLY RITES
Ecdysis<\/strong><\/span>
\n\"\"
\nProsthetic (2024)<\/span>
Rating: 9\/10<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\n\n
<\/td>\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n
\n
<\/span><\/div>\n<\/td>\n
\n
<\/span><\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

Unearthly Rites is another new Finnish act bursting not only with talent but a foul smelling mix of death metal and crust. Ecdysis<\/em> is one of the nastiest slabs I\u2019ve heard this year and has so many dirt-caked qualities from those rough vocals, the harsh bass lines, the gritty drums and rank riffs that emit clouds of toxic ash.<\/p>\n

The cover art reminds me of one of those 80s independent punk atrocities fused with the band Doom and the sound is an apocalyptic avalanche caused by gnashing riff rats Santtu Markko and Simo Perki\u00f6m\u00e4ki. Imagine vast acidic geysers bursting with cascading silt; dense unfiltered fumes form suffocating mushroom clouds and lead man Sisli Piisil\u00e4 is genuinely a soul possessed. His vocal style is so demonic and putrid, somehow a fog horn through the ever gathering and choking mists, and, dare I say it, almost original in their aggression. The hideous nature of the vocal delivery is only matched by Jennika Vikman\u2019s grinding bass tone as great, chalky walls of grey are constructed amidst flurries of despair and grief.<\/p>\n

With each spin I can only marvel at the extremity in each department within the group as Unearthly Rites one moment provides juggernaut rhythms like Bolt Thrower, the next a crust-coated grind that billows and discharges plumes of soot. \u2018Deep Drilling Earth\u2019s Crust\u2019 begins like some harsh radio frequency picking up debris from deep space before the abrasive grunts emerge through the hectic static. The quintet slogs to a grinding chug, the guitars clogged with cement and the drums caked with grey clay.<\/p>\n

\u2018The Master\u2019s Tools\u2019 marries a fuzzed death doom; bleak and dissonant as the bass strings hang low, occasionally scraping the ground and disturbing the smouldering layers. The brief \u2018Fuck Ecofacism\u2019 is as equally dragging as the colossal title track, as with each buzzing composition the band thickens the smog. The vocals become more and more choked, gasping through the cloying wisps of blizzard rust.<\/p>\n

\u2018Doomed\u2019 chugs with such a foreboding as one pictures once angular Voivodian landscapes now crumpled heaps of twisted metal. If legendary death doom act Winter were to ever return from the ice, I\u2019d expect Unearthly Rites to get the call to support them on tour because Ecdysis<\/em> has that same sluggish grind of misery; a sound that conjures images of gaunt pallid spectres wafting between anaemic shells of once vast structures coated in coagulated powder.<\/p>\n

\u2018Sacrifice Zones\u2019 is that epitome of despair, a heaving and laborious ooze with a fetid spine of ever disintegrating ash. \u2018Capitalocenic Nightmare\u2019 escapes from the intoxicating sediment by providing a steamroller effect, rolling like a crater-face behemoth of pulsating quakes and distorted throbs. Meanwhile, \u2018New Venus\u2019, at least musically, powers with a crust punk sensibility, but there is little here to jog along to, instead, Unearthly Rites is the musical equivalent to a rancid shower at Chernobyl. It\u2019s all unpleasant, leaden and grief-stricken and leaves the listener alone and collapsed within a thick overcast shroud of hopelessness.<\/p>\n

Neil Arnold<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UNEARTHLY RITESEcdysis Prosthetic (2024)Rating: 9\/10 Unearthly Rites is another new Finnish act bursting not only with talent but a foul smelling mix of death metal and crust. Ecdysis is one of the nastiest slabs I\u2019ve heard this year and has so many dirt-caked qualities from those rough vocals, the harsh bass lines, the gritty drums […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,5682],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-ep-reviews","category-unearthly-rites"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103186"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103194,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103186\/revisions\/103194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}