This is the debut release from Italian death metallers Encelado.
Pillars of Creation contains four tracks, with a duration of 14 minutes. To get you in the right mood for Encelado, the promo blurb mentions bands such as Aborted, All Shall Perish, and Dying Fetus for the music, and Cannibal Corpse and Suffocation for the vocals.
Dark Nebulas starts us off, blasting out without fanfare, just as I like it. Across the four songs the music is well-constructed, with an ear for rhythmic hooks, melodic accents, and razored riffing. The band have some good ideas that they use effectively across the tracks too – each one seems to have a few different things going on that add to the overall song. It’s also quite technical, and although aggressive, is less brutal than the bands quoted above. Pillars of Creation reminds me of a more technical, mathcore-influenced version of death metal, maybe something like one of the few instrumental death metal bands that are out there – Sleep Terror, for example.
Encelado do have vocals though, although they’re of an unusual sort that counterintuitively only reinforces my impression of Encelado as an instrumental act; they effectively work as another layer of instrumentation, and essentially utter their own daemonic incantations almost irrespective of the rest of the music. The vocals are dark and deep, and utterly inhumanly monstrous. They’re sure to be an acquired taste for some – a non-standard delivery, a sort of a slowly spoken growl, or something like that. They’re not completely to my taste, but certainly not badly performed.
Pillars of Creation is an interesting release that showcases a band at the early stages of describing their own sound. I think there is a lot of promise here. If they can continue to develop their style, Encelado could be an intriguing prospect in the future. Give this a listen and see what you think.
Wonderbox Metal 