{"id":71343,"date":"2018-05-05T00:00:50","date_gmt":"2018-05-05T00:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=71343"},"modified":"2018-08-02T18:37:30","modified_gmt":"2018-08-02T18:37:30","slug":"album-review-pious-levus-beast-of-the-foulest-depths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/album-review-pious-levus-beast-of-the-foulest-depths\/","title":{"rendered":"PIOUS LEVUS – Beast Of The Foulest Depths (2018) | Album \/ EP Reviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

PIOUS LEVUS
Beast Of The Foulest Depths<\/strong><\/span>
\n\"\"
\nWarfare Noise Productions (2018)<\/span>
Rating: 5\/10<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Featuring former members of Thornspawn, Hod and Burial Shroud comes San Antonio, Texas-based blasphemous breed Pious Levus with their debut half-hour of annihilation. Beast Of The Foulest Depths<\/em>, in spite of its venomous speed and lairy looseness, seems completely bereft of weight, however.<\/p>\n

Production-wise, this is a strange record; the band rattle relentlessly with their vicious brand of blackened death lashes, but clearly the bass and drums were left at home as we\u2019re treated to 11 songs that simply have no spine. Imagine if you will that someone had stolen your bass and treble buttons from your stereo because that\u2019s exactly how this opus operates, and it\u2019s a glaring fault that\u2019s difficult to look past.<\/p>\n

Anyway, what is on offer are a selection of loose \u2018n\u2019 lethal spits including \u2018Nameless Cruciforms\u2019, the hammering title track, \u2018Desolate Dreams Of Burial Hymns\u2019, \u2018Hellborn Host\u2019 and \u2018Conquered Swine\u2019. All are fast licks of hellish intent, but how can any mood be created when Necroinferno\u2019s percussion is just so distant and the bass pretty much omitted?<\/p>\n

In fact, Beast Of The Foulest Depths<\/em> just feels unfinished, almost slapdash in its creation and with too many rather generic expressions of violence which for the most part seem to melt into one another with no real effect. The vocal outbursts are typically dehydrated and soot-coated, but the music in general has a hostile hiss that displays just too much fragility. It\u2019s as if, because that backbone has been removed, that at any minute the whole affair could just combust into a sorry heap of ash.<\/p>\n

All of the tracks are relatively short, as expected with such a brief duration for an album. The only ones which get their talons in are the slow, churning menace of \u2018Crimson God Possession\u2019, the tinny rush of \u2018Encursing Invader\u2019 and the ominous strains of \u2018Daemon Xusha’s Invocation\u2019, but if Pious Levus are attempting to recreate an early Bathory-styled lo-fi noise then they\u2019ve kind\u2019ve failed miserably. In this instance, the record sounds weak rather than obscure, and sounds thin rather than cavernous.<\/p>\n

For all of its attempted might, Beast Of The Foulest Depths<\/em> just feels so frail; the guys behind it fail to create a wall of insidious clamour, instead replacing it with a sort of hapless racket that has the effect of a sack of tin cans being shook for too long. That\u2019s a shame. With some extra padding and meatiness, Pious Levus\u2019 debut racket would have been a noteworthy expression of black \/ death horror, but instead I\u2019m left pointing the finger at the producer… or has someone pulled a wire on my speakers?<\/p>\n

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

PIOUS LEVUSBeast Of The Foulest Depths Warfare Noise Productions (2018)Rating: 5\/10 Featuring former members of Thornspawn, Hod and Burial Shroud comes San Antonio, Texas-based blasphemous breed Pious Levus with their debut half-hour of annihilation. Beast Of The Foulest Depths, in spite of its venomous speed and lairy looseness, seems completely bereft of weight, however. Production-wise, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,4087],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-ep-reviews","category-pious-levus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71343","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=71343"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71344,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71343\/revisions\/71344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}