Just check out this album cover from Finland’s Ashen Tomb!!  Anytime you’ve got a Kaiju-sized maggot-encrusted corpse sitting down saying:  “Wow! I’ve had a rough life, I’m gonna sit my ass down for a break and maybe order me up some cheeseburgers” – well I’m gonna be all over the album, let me tell you.

After releasing a decent ep a few years ago Ashen Tomb has unloaded their eight-song debut album Ecstatic Death Reign.  I want to first jump to the fifth song on the album, due to the ridiculously long song title: “Ancient Tombs Sealed with Dead Tongues to Preserve the Hidden One Slumbering in the Bowels of the Earth (Mummified in Cavernous Darkness)”.  Now if you want to play the hardest tongue-twister drinking game with your friends try remembering this song title and then you have to repeat it several times.  If you fail you have to down a beer.  Within 10 minutes I believe your party would all be passed out.

After a little soft opening the song erupts with a cavernous heaving heaviness that reeks of classic Finnish 90’s death metal.  If you are a fan of classic Purtenance then you will love Ashen Tomb.  After the slower opening right into the hyper fast moments and Ilkka Laaksonen has a helluva set of pipes on him.  He goes from throaty raspy growls to some killer gutturals.  Just like all classic Finnish death metal expect the doom elements to creep forth.  At the four minute mark that is precisely what transpires.  Slow, brooding heaviness which also includes some classic guitar solos.  Joonatan Mäkinen and Roni Oksanen are a good guitar duo and after the classic soloing, right into the bombastic old school blast beats courtesy of Valtteri Viro.  Karhu Kuru’s bass adds an element of heaving heaviness as well.  This is a great song smack dab in the middle of the album.

“Body Bog” is actually the album opener and it starts immediately with the old-school isolated guitar riffing and cymbal hits and not unlike something classic Suffocation would do in the 90’s.  Then after this opening right into a monstrous blast beat.  I do enjoy albums with intros, however, I also enjoy when a band just straight out rips right into the music and this opening is destructive.  The awesome growl at the 1.20 section literally gave me the heebie jeebies!  More wild guitar solos erupt and the natural-sounding drums hit hard.  The classic galloping moments at the 2.30 section will take you back to 1990 all over again.  Some excellent guitar melodies erupt and the slower section with the guttural vocals is a massive-sounding moment.

“Catharsis Through Torture” pretty much starts as “Body Bog” is ending.  I love the tie-in.  The tempo shift from a slow opening right into the blast and then double pounding sections are great.  There’s a neat little drum roll then right into the primitive sounding blasts.  The mid-paced groovier moments also have a plethora of guitar squeals, squeaks, pinch harmonics, until right into a more atmospheric slower section.  The guitar harmony is great, while the heavy guitar riffing, underneath gives the song power!  The slow doomy sections at the 3.50 part is deeply heavy with Incantation stylized doomy, and dissonance.  Again – some killer vocals as well- this dude is one of my new favorite vocalists.

Ecstatic Death Reign is a most excellent filthy death metal debut album from Ashen Tomb.  Memorable songs all played with intensity with enough nods to the gods of yore to keep one satiated.  I love the warm, less clinical-sounding production.  It creates a true heaviness to the various sounds going on here.  This band needs to be on your radar at once.  Promising debut album!

[Visit the band's website]

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