(written by Islander)
The stunning cover artwork created by Belial NecroArts for the debut album by the band Perishing commands attention, creating a vision of spectral magnificence and frightening desolation. But it is more than a chilling piece of visual art standing on its own, because the visions it creates pair very well with the death/doom metal of this talented Costa Rican band.
The name of the album (which also fits very well as a title for the artwork) is Malicious Acropolis Unveiled. It is only Perishing‘s second release overall, following their Lutum demo last year, but the band’s members have previously honed their talents in such groups as Astriferous, Mortual, and Necroferum, and they have made a work that will shiver you from head to toe.
We back up those thoughts today with our premiere of a song from the album in advance of the record’s October 11 release by Transcending Obscurity Records. Its name also links arms with the cover art, and with the album title: “Las Ruinas del Palacio“.
In this new song Perishing immediately create a haunting, skin-chilling mood, with a slow and somber melody whose notes eerily ring and reverberate, backed by glacially paced percussive thumps, cracks, and shivering cymbals. As it miserably rises and falls the melody is ghostly and gloomy, bereft but mesmerizing, the weaving of a stricken spell.
In time, but not too soon (right about the song’s mid-point), Perishing make a change, creating an electrifying bridge of angry gnarled chords, vividly tumbling beats, and brazen musical blasts. On the other side of that bridge is a humongous, head-moving, pile-driving stomp and macabre gurgling growls.
It’s a monstrous, ice-cold, but pulse-pushing experience, made even more frightening by doses of writhing and moaning riffage. And the energy continues building, with drums beginning to scamper and the guitars viciously gnawing and churning. Yet the music’s haunting aspects reappear with chiming notes that dismally ring out and wail above a massively heavy sequence of crawling and pounding.
And so the song proves to be subterranean, soul-sinking, spellbinding, titanically heavy, and physically compulsive – a lot to achieve so successfully in a single song.
PERISHING is:
JM Arrea (Astriferous, ex-Bloodsoaked Necrovoid) – Drums
José Pablo Phillips (Astriferous, Candarian) – Bass
Justin Sánchez (Mortual, Necroferum) – Guitars
J. Antonio Salas – Vocals
Transcending Obscurity will release the album on gatefold vinyl LP, digipak CD, cassette tape, and digital formats, with apparel and other merch. They recommend it for fans of Disembowelment, Rippikoulu, Mortiferum, Winter, Thergothon, and Inverloch.
For more info, check the links below. We’re also including streams of two previously released songs from the album, “Castle of the Leached Body” and “Osedax (Devoured by the Cavernous Worm)”
PRE-ORDER:
https://perishing.bandcamp.com/album/malicious-acropolis-unveiled
http://transcendingobscurity.aisamerch.com/
http://eu.tometal.com/
PERISHING:
https://www.instagram.com/perishing_doom/