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Released on November 14, 2014 via Dark Descent Records
Every once in a while you stumble upon a death metal release that just hits all the right buttons and gets getting better and better with each listen, discovering more layers that gradually come to the surface. Ecdysis by American old school death metal band Horrendous is such a release. Ecdysis has been getting a lot of praise by the metal press, even scoring some high positions on some of the end of the year lists. This was enough reason for me to listen to Ecdysis to figure out what the fuss is all about. The critics weren’t wrong as I can guarantee that it is one of this year’s best death metal releases, as far as I’m concerned at least.
Not because it is brutal as so many death metal bands seem to strive for these days. There are no continuous double bass drum salvos, there aren’t continuous heavy shredding and fast guitar solos or a heavily over-produced harsh grunting vocal style. What Horrendous does on Ecdysis is far from all of this, but it still manages to rip all over the place.
They describe themselves as “playing a style of metal influenced mostly by death metal bands of the early 90s”, and after listening to Ecdysis a couple of times this is probably the most fitting description. There are elements of Death’s Human, especially the way the bass parts are played, bringing a lot of progressive elements to their music, such as in the tracks ‘Resonator’ and ‘Pavor Nocturnus’. The vocals go back to early Obituary and Asphyx, with this clear sounding grunt making it easy to understand the lyrics as well. At other times the vocals sound a bit more black metal like, but still clear and understandable. And what is really amazing are the amount of riffs giving little nods to the heavy and at times glam metal genres.
What really got me with Ecdysis is the production done at Subterranean Watchtower Studios, which is run by Damian Herring of the band. Ecdysis sounds very crisp and clean, not over-produced at all. All the instruments sit perfectly in the mix and especially that bass sounds absolutely beautiful. Too many death metal releases sound way too over produced and focus on the guitar sound, not really paying much attention to the bass and Horrendous nails this perfectly. There is a lot of melody as well on this album, such as the intro to ‘Monarch’ or the melodic riffing on ‘Nepenthe’. Midway through the album they break things up with a perhaps slightly daring acoustic track, ‘The Vermillion’, but even this rips and works perfectly on the album as a whole.
Horrendous has been around since 2009 and Ecdysis is only their third release after the 2009 demo Sweet Blasphemies and the full-length The Chills released in 2012. Ecdysis should really open up more doors for the band, they are definitely a band to watch. I for one will be watching them for sure.
Ecdysis was released last October on Dark Descent Records and features some amazing artwork by Brian Smith. Give these guys some old school death metal love!
