Resin Tomb – Cerebral Purgatory
Release Date: 19th January 2024
Label: Transcending Obscurity Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Death Metal, Brutal Death Metal.
FFO: Terra Builder, Replicant, Vermin Womb, Norse, Spurn, Michel Anoia.
Review By: Andy Spoon
If I wasn’t already enthralled with some of the upcoming releases from the beginning of 2024, I am in the camp of those who are ready to be blown away. If 2023 wasn’t one of the better years for metal in ages, I think that 2024 might be one. Perhaps, my opinion is just that, my opinion. Yet, there is a likelihood of my being remembered as being right on a few things. Namely, my obsession with some of the newer bands that are propped-up by enterprising labels will be remembered as the right choice, as some of the best new underground music is starting to surface and bloom. It looks like 2024 is one of the harvest seasons for extreme music, if 2023 was a year for the resurgence of classic bands who released new music.
Resin Tomb, one of Australia’s recent brutal death metal outfits is set to release their highly-anticipated LP, Cerebral Purgatory on January 19th on Transcending Obscurity Records, a label which I have already lauded as one to watch in 2024. The LP features 8 tracks that are sure to appeal to your sensibilities if you are a fan of the genre, featuring non-stop heaviness and existential brutality, something that I was genuinely impressed with.
For starters, the album was recorded with excellent technique, giving dynamic clarity to the instruments, especially bass guitar. One of the things that I noticed right off the bat was how clearly I could hear each distinct musical section. Naturally, guitars are always a big part of these albums, but Resin Tomb’s latest release seems more balanced, at least to my ears. I found it to be a pleasurable listen, not in the sense of quality (which we’ll get to), but purely from a production standpoint. It’s often assumed that the mix in this subgenre needs to be welded-together into something almost incomprehensible, which is part of the charm for many fans. I found Cerebral Purgatory to be an easy listen (at least from the production and mixing).
The content is just holistically brutal and delicious. It’s not as dissonant in total as its label brother Saevus Finis, but it’s absolutely a showcase of nasty sound effects and dissonant hooks across the entire LP. One of the things that Resin Tomb really manages to do well is to get an invigorating hook on guitar and continue to develop the riffs off of that hook for at least several bars, allowing the listener some time to really absorb the beauty of the hook and headbang to it. There’s absolutely no shortage of slow breakdowns (not in the “core” sense, however) that feed right back into thrashy blast-beat sections, keeping almost every track going between tasty chops and extreme, punishing torrents of sound.
One of the things that I noticed was that I really felt like they could have gone a little longer on some of the tracks, as most of them seem to live right around three to five minutes. I don’t think this is remotely-bad at all. If anything, it helps to create urgency and dynamic flow to the song list. However, I was impressed-enough with Resin Tomb, that I wouldn’t have minded a few punishing 11-minute tracks with multiple movements and various kick-downs or lulls. In essence, I was enjoying my listening experience to such a degree that I really didn’t mind if the LP went on a bit longer, something that I don’t often say about most death metal offerings.
There is an obvious musical theme that pervades the entire album, something that is quite nuanced, but important to note. There are several guitar patterns that seem to repeat across the duration of the record. That’s not to say it’s copy and paste, though. Rather, it’s a stylistic choice of creating dissonance – similar to the way that black metal bands seem to have a similar structure to many of their tracks. The dissonant, blackened goodness just seems to create a twisted, “ugly” atmosphere that comes back and back and back between moments of extreme heaviness and speed, giving a thematic grit that survives from track-to-track. For someone like me, who happens to be a little snobby, I ended up thinking that it was one of two things: Either Resin Tomb doesn’t have that much of a library of riffs, or they wanted Cerebral Purgatory to have a resonating, pounding repetition that brutalizes the listener. I tend to lean towards the latter interpretation.
Best track: Putrescence
(4 / 5)
