Though they started releasing albums in 2010, one could argue that the 2011 releases by Entrails (The Tomb Awaits) and Corpsessed ( The Dagger & The Chalice EP) were the label’s watershed, ‘we have arrived’ releases. Of course, Corpsessed waited another three years to release a debut full-length, Abysmal Thresholds in 2014, but by then the label was and is, one of the premier American record labels for extreme metal.

Well, Corpsessed certainly likes the 4-year gaps between albums as it was 2018 until we got album number 2, Impetus of Death, and now we finally get album number three from one of Dark Descent’s flagship bands (I’d say Blood Incantation and Desolate Shrine are arguably the others?). And as I like to tell my wife, ‘it’s quality, not quantity. (Yes that’s a 9-year throwback to a wife reference from the Dagger & the Chalice EP review). And yes, it’s also worth the wait.

Continuing the band’s murky, doomy, crumbling take on death metal, these Finns are the absolute masters of their sickly, nauseating craft. Once again with guitarist/ vocalist Matti Mäkelä’s production and master, which although seemingly ‘cleaner’ than before, is still just oozingly massive, especially in the album’s many slower, doomier segments that crawl like a 2000lb slug. It’s not quite Desolate Shrine doom/death as there is plenty of tumbling, scrawling blast beats that will appeal to label mates Gorephilia and Hyperdontia and such. It’s truly become ‘Dark Descent’s’ immediately identifiable sound.

With fitting song titles like “Death-Stench Effluvium”, “Relentless Entropy” and “Profane Phlegm”, you know exactly what you are getting here; a miasmal, discordant, fetid churn with ample moments of crawling, loping menace. Nothing sums up Corpsessed’s sound like the fly buzzing opening of “Death-Stench Effluvium”.

As with prior albums, Corpsessed shine (though hardly a fitting word) when they focus on the slower more heaving, crawling riffs like the end of “Relentless Entropy”, the aforementioned ‘”Death-Stench Effluvium”, epically miserable “Spiritual Malevolence”, sickly, hacking mid section of “Profane Phlegm” and 6 +minute closer “Pneuma Akathartos”, the album’s lumbering ending standout. But certainly more up-tempo, churning numbers like “Calling Void” and “Sublime Indignation” are effective, filthy blasters as well.

Another winner for Corpsessed and Dark Descent Records, who seem to be back on track to match their 2011- 2016 output, where they were absolutely un fuck-with-able.

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