Corpse Garden – IAO 269 (Review)

This is the third album by Costa Rican death metallers Corpse Garden.

Following up from 2015’s Entheogen, Corpse Garden are back with 51 minutes of dark, evil death metal.

Corpse Garden take a sideways approach to death metal, eschewing many of the standard trappings of the genre. Yes, yes, the core of the style is here and intact, (otherwise it wouldn’t be death metal), but other than that this is a band that do things on their own terms and in distinctly non-standard ways.

This manifests in the compositional structure of the songs, and in the atypical riffs that the band regularly employ. Technical and dissonant elements frequently battle each other for supremacy, while a kind of toned-down Ævangelist-esque horrorscape influence slowly spreads across the album like a creeping plague.

This is swirling, nightmarish music, taking the death metal base style and twisting and contorting it into something new, something pained and horrific. This is an album that’s just as much about dark atmosphere as it is about brutal aggression and unusual riffing.

Grimmer, rawer, and filthier than Entheogen, I can’t help think that this is both a logical progression for the band and also a very, very good thing. Corpse Garden were certainly on to something special with their last release, but now they have fully realised it.

Highly recommended.