Assumption – Hadean Tides
Release Date: 20th May 2022
Label: Everlasting Spew Records/Sentient Ruin Laboratories
Bandcamp
Genre: Death Metal, Doom Metal.
FFO: diSEMBOWELMENT, Disma, Evoken, Oranssi Pazuzu.
Review By: Jason James
Formed in Palermo in Italy in 2011, Assumption return with their second album, Hadean Tides. Giorgio Trombino (Vocals, Guitars, Synths) and David Lucido (Drums) have now become a quartet, adding Matija Dolinar (Siderean) on Guitar and Claudio Troise (who released an album just a few weeks ago as a member of Tenebra) on Bass.
Hadean Tides is a rockslide in album form, in the best possible way. It’s the musical equivalent of the movement of the Earth’s crust, due to the rising and falling of the temperature of the raging inferno bubbling underneath, like a volcanic eruption that then proceeds to wipe out the village at the foot of said volcano. The drums spew forth molten death while the guitars belch out toxic clouds, underpinned by the gravelly ground-shaking vocals that caused the powder keg to erupt in the first place.
There are bouts of calm before the tinderbox explodes again. Track 4, Breath of The Dedalus, has a strange, menacing tone, like the rise and fall of the chest of a gigantic dormant beast. Also, the beginning of track 6, Triptych, has Giorgio chanting over quiet instrumentation, as if reciting an ancient incantation. The final track, Black Trees Waving, is my personal favourite. It’s an absolutely blistering track, just wave upon wave of slow, creeping oppression. Nigh on fifteen minutes of ever-present fury, an imperceptible menace lurking just out of your line of sight. About six minutes in, there is a deft guitar solo, creating a beautiful juxtaposition with the sepulchral undertones. It’s a fearsome end to a great album.
I haven’t kept up with recent Italian history, but I would guess that there is something very worrying happening in the underbelly of Italian society that seems to be giving birth to a plethora of noteworthy death and doom metal music. Not wishing bad times on anyone, but if it produces music of this calibre, long may it continue.
(4 / 5)
