I had this Canadian death metal outfit’s monstrous self-released debut album, Archaeaeon, recommended by the fine readers of this very site, but I had no idea that they were working on a second album… let alone on the mighty Profound Lore Records where they slither along nicely next to the likes of Portal, Vasaeleth and Impetuous Ritual.

As with the new Ulcerate album, the danger of reviewing an album with the scope Parasignosis, is to rush into the review and simply gush over its immediate brilliance — a brilliance you can feel from the very first tendrils of “Plague Evockation (Pestilentiam Intus Vocamus, Voluntatem Absolvimus Part I)”, where you simply know you are going to be listening to something special. Therefore, for Parasignosis, I waited and gave the album several very deliberate listens and let my opinions lurk in my subconscious mind before laying them to paper. And thusly like at an occult, Lovecraftian initiation rite… all was revealed to me: All the undulating horror, all the vast, oozing magnificence, all the spectral, malevolent intelligence.

As with the above, aforementioned bands (and Deathspell Omega I might add) Parasignosis isn’t so much an album, but an experience. An experience that requires the right frame of mind, the right mind altering drugs and the right headphones. And whence you descend into Parasignosis you may well be changed. For starters, it took multiple listens to detect the children’s screams and paranoid whisperings that fill the entirety of “Plague Evockation (Pestilentiam Intus Vocamus, Voluntatem Absolvimus Part I)”. It’s simply moments like that, that make Parasignosis such a nerve wracking exercise in controlled awe inspiring mayhem.

Throughout the albums 55-minute duration, and in the right situation and mood, the album literally unfurls before you. The slow crawls, calamitous blasts and cavernous, vomitous growls seem to eventually settle and reveal so many subtle intricacies and spine tingling harmonies, dense harmonies not of this earth that would normally defy casual listening. Not that Parasignosis is just another glorified Immolation album on steroids—thats simply a muddy vortex of backwards riffs—no, it’s so much more. The dreadful intricacies of the music combined with Colin Marsten (Krallice) mix and master makes the album actually breathe, hack and spew forth its venom in a palpably insidious way.

Whether it’s the cacophonous blast, bellow and march of the albums dread inducing centerpiece “Tetravirulence (Pestilentiam Intus Vocamus, Voluntatem Absolvimus Part III)”, the thunderous squeal of “Trials”, the hideous lope that surfaces wickedly during the title track, the atonal miasma of “Banishment (Undecaphosphoric)”, or sickening crawl of instrumental closer “Kathenothism”,  the album is almost intoxicating in that it pulls you further in with each listen. Those seemingly initially simple throes of discordant death metal, with each listen, start to burrow further and deeper until each track is a mind melting kaleidoscope of sonic chaos that seems to defy the laws of sound. Furthermore, I don’t think I’m still yet to fully comprehend everything the album has to offer

While I do enjoy the clinical precision of say, the new Obscura record, it’s bands like Mitochondrion and Ulcerate that are pushing the boundaries of what death metal should be in its purest, most vile and brilliant form and thusly, both Ulcerate’s Destroyers of All and Parasignosis, are 2011’s first album of the year contenders.

[Visit the band's website]

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