Beats and yelling: Thaumaturgy

Pestilential Hymns
Out 20^th October on Memento Mori

Thaumatrugy upgrade themselves from the competent but commonplace chasmic death/doom of the debut into a more holistic statement of extreme metal. Reinvigorating the increasingly murky territory between black and death metal with a clarity that can only come from a rigorous riff discipline. The demo phase of Swedish death metal from Grotesque and Desultory provide a muscular if rudimentary basis, onto which the picture is complicated by a more mature phase in death metal represented by everything from Incantation to Pestilence. US black metal in the likes of Profanatica or Demoncy provides a discomforting atmospheric undercurrent, darkening the picture without diluting the determined, angular rhythmic core of the music.

The production is more agnostic than a lot of modern releases, refusing to lean explicitly into any set of aesthetic currents that permeate the contemporary scene, be it OSDM, caverncore, blackened thrash, or brutal death metal. The guitar tone is weighty, but retains a clarity and sharpness suited to articulating the choppier riffs as well as the extended black metal currents running through the album. This allows Thaumaturgy to blend the impulses of each genre and their subcategories to great effect, expanding on contrasting moods and themes without ever devolving into incongruity. Drums are lower in the mix but make their presence known regardless. Matching the guitars in their ability to switch from fluid blast-beats to choppier, anomic patterns that split the flow of the music apart with explosive violence, offsetting any ambient currents accrued in the preceding material.

This latter feature is enhanced by subtle keyboard lines lurking in the background, signalling toward moments of dramatic significance soaring above the barbarism. The vocal performance is distinctive for its tortured, high end death growl closely mirroring the unmistakable approach of Martin van Drunen. This only serves to bring out the contrast between the channelling of power against an underlying tragedian current. 

In this sense ‘Pestilential Hymns’ is a thematically dense album even if the raw experience feels spacious. Studying the riff patterns reveals a wealth of traditions and styles brought to the fore. Similarly, the mood swings wildly from base violence to sorrow to triumphalism as it navigates itself through these labyrinthine machinations. But overseeing these polarities is a clear aesthetic intent binding this material together. A degree of soundscaping that gives the album a cinematic, immersive finish, ensuring that everything makes sense in context, that even the most contradictory moments exist in a wider narrative framework. The result is a rich layer cake of an album, an initially broad brushstroke of extreme metal challenging the listener to traverse its vast contours, but on repeated spins one is able to pick apart the various cogs and impulses working at the molecular level beneath.