DWELLING BELOW
DWELLING BELOW "Dwelling Below"
By Dr. Abner Mality
Determined to inject yet more misery into an already dying world, we now have the debut of DWELLING BELOW. Death-doom music has been booming lately, no doubt due to the current end times, and this bunch are doing their bit to increase the suicide rate.
This is a pretty bleak record. They are compared to the likes of AUTOPSY, INCANTATION and labelmates GATEWAY, but I think they're on a different, weirder path than those bands. Everything here sounds off...not in the sense that D.B. are bad players, but the riffing, production and songwriting is warped, ominous and queasy. The death metal aspect is certainly there and the band even has a fair amount of fast blasting, but somehow even the faster stuff sounds like it's coming from another dimension. It's not as bottom-heavy as GATEWAY, sounding almost watery at times, and there's a lot of guitar soloing of all types...straight noise, neoclassical, minor key. Solos come at unexpected times and the result is you are always in a state of tense anticipation. One thing that's 100% death metal are the cavernous roaring growls which are completely impenetrable but which act as another instrument in themseves. No clean singing or rasps here....it's pure wind tunnel growling.
Just four tracks here, but all are ponderous. The final cut "Sheltered Acceptance" is most compelling, as the band sounds like they are just jamming and leaping from one crushing riff to the next. In final analysis, DWELLING BELOW will appeal to those who like the weirder, more atonal corners of the death-doom universe but I feel they have room to improve.