Maceration is on the rampage again.
Following their confirmed comeback at the end of 2022 with an album, Jakob Schultz (guitar, ex-Invocator), accompanied today by Jan Bergmann Jepsen (vocals, Cor Vacante), Rune Koldby (bass, ex-Encyrcle, ex-Spectral Mortuary), Robert Tengs (guitar) and Nicolai Kaltoft (drums, ex-Corpus Mortale) unveil today Serpent Devourment, their third album, with the support of Emanzipation Productions.
Some guitar parts were recorded by Lars Bangsholt before his departure.
Eponymous composition Serpent Devourment is the first to strike, first with its heavy atmosphere then with bloody riffs and abrasive melodies combined with furious vocal parts. A hint of melancholy can be felt in the slower passages, while The Den of Misery reveals its full rage from the very first moments, never letting it falter, even if the band does occasionally slow down a little before a haunting final. The band follows up with A Corrosive Heart Fell Below, where heady harmonies appear from time to time to soothe the waves of raw violence, but a sample comes to their aid before the final charge towards Where Leeches Thrive, where the sound becomes ominous before showing us its true power. The composition remains rooted in Danish-style Old School Death and its specific sounds, then the band crushes us unmercifully with The Suffering, one of the shortest but clearly not the least effective of its tracks. Emptiness Embraced follows with a catchy groove, but also more airy lead passages that also counterbalance the jerky approach of When Torment Befell My Pain. The track is also quite short, but proves its effectiveness with a solid rhythmic pattern before giving way to In Rot Unleashed, where a martial approach and a tortured solo await us to complete the lively patterns that finally join the wild Revolt the Tyrant Dream, which bludgeons us in its turn. Dissonant harmonics add to the fury before turning macabre on For the End Alone, the album’s final composition, which allows the Danes to spit out their hatred one last time on thick riffs.
Maceration is one of those bands whose rebirth confirms Old School Death Metal’s power, even thirty years on. Nothing new under the sun, but Serpent Devourment brings us its share of furious riffs just the way we like them!
85/100