Unearthly Rites are a Finnish death metal band and this is their debut album.
Here’s some nasty death metal for you to clog up your pores. Ecdysis is a sludge factory of old-school death metal that really brings out the filth in the style. Across 34 minutes Unearthly Rites spread their disease with convincing menace and a swamp’s worth of heaviness.
Unearthly Rites’ foul output is toxic and lethal. Virulent strains of doom, crust, and hardcore have leaked into the music’s reservoirs, tainting an already noxious cocktail of poisons to produce something that’s utterly unsuitable for human consumption. Unless, of course, you’re a hardened death metal veteran with a taste for all things ancient and repellent.
Once you get past the pointless intro, (same question as always here – why do bands bother with such filler?), we’re assailed by a ragged, horrific brutality that’s both bluntly aggressive and scathingly harsh. The music rages and lashes out with impunity, and I like the careless carnage that it deals out. Splashes of sharp melody paint the corrosive riffs, adding warning shades of red to the music’s dark core of distorted heaviness, while the drums pound away mercilessly. Vocally, the deep growls we’re assaulted by are as monstrous as you’d want them to be, but the infrequent acidic screams are strikingly abrasive, and I adore them.
Unearthly Rites know how to write and delivery some filthy death metal, that’s for sure. I prefer the music when its slows down, rather than in its faster guises, but Ecdysis works well either way to be honest. A solid slab of malignant nastiness, if this sort of death metal capsizes your boat, then check this out for sure.
Wonderbox Metal 