France has offered some excellent old school Death Metal in recent years. Now a new entity called Sépulcre spews forth from this very scene with their debut demo set for release via Invictus Productions on November 13th.
Ambient sounds set the demo off with an eerie and simple beginning utilising samples to create foreboding tension. Whammy abuse and murky riffs with thundering bass sprawled across a pounding drum assault kicks right into a doomy and spectral crawl of filthiness. The chunky and thick production and musicianship of abyss-summoning skills allows us to immediately become enveloped in the dense sway of rotten riffing carnage. With a hideously snarled vocal performance joining the crushing instrumentals, this is truly sepulchral Death Metal of menacing and malicious proportions. Delving through charnel passages of odiously brutal and dark creepiness, there is a foul and malignant spirit to this music that is utterly ferocious.
Aside from swampy and guttural rhythmic blows, we see some tasty lead guitar work (primarily whammy dives) that adds a bit of melody and piercing highs to the growling, muddy mix. Clearly these musicians have plentiful skill and offering primal mayhem is a choice. This said, the music is not idiotic or basic, there is atmosphere and nuance in buckets that is just delivered so damn beautifully in such a horrifically grotesque manner. Punishing and stupefying with intensity and pure mighty heaviness, this is the kind of demo that sinks its teeth into your flesh if you are the vicinity of it being played and intoxicates you with raw charm and relentless grit. Submit to the obliterating trio of tracks from this putrid project or be cast asunder.
Barbaric and eerie Death Metal from the depths of the void. That is what we see on the first demo of Sépulcre with an unrelenting and vanquishing sense of dread, delivered by a devastating performance across the 3 tracks that follow a simple but effective introduction. Each song is a totally gruesome offering and together make a superb demo that will certainly grasp the underground Death Metal scene. Everything is present to suggest huge promise from this new band while still having enough room to grow (as one would expect from a demo). Keep your eyes peeled and your ears prepared. -8/10
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