After releasing a pair of demos and an EP from 2012 through 2017, the Italian death metal band Riexhumation then turned their energies to the creation of a debut album that’s now set for release by Lavadome Productions on this coming Friday, May 28th — and it turns out to be a big, eye-opening surprise that should be greedily welcomed by death metal connoisseurs.

It’s not as if this quartet are green newcomers — in addition to those three previous Riexhumation releases, a glance at their resumes on Metal-Archives shows their involvement in other noteworthy extreme metal collectives — but this album is still a most impressive accomplishment.

To borrow some of the (accurate) words from the PR material, it embraces primeval and frightening energies that “dwell somewhere deep within the chasms of the cosmos” to create “ominous, old school death metal darkness” that’s alternately “doom-laden, eerie, raw, and blistering”. It evokes anguished dread, instinctual terrors, and visceral thrills in equal measure, and does so with admirable song-writing dynamism and instrumental execution. Continue reading »