ALBUM REVIEW: Dwelling Below – Dwelling Below
Formed by members of ACAUSAL INTRUSION and HOLLOWED IDOLS, DWELLING BELOW now unleash their filthy, furious-sounding death-doom upon the world. If the malformed, Lovecraftian thing on the album cover art is anything to go by (and it is) then fans of all things heavy and horrifying are sure to be in for a treat.
DWELLING BELOW are a band who admittedly record a lot of their material while improvising – a tough art at the best of times, let alone when you’re creating progressively monstrous and complex epics like the four songs that make up the 38-minute running time of this record. Despite this unconventional approach to writing, though, there is a pulsing core at the heart of each of these tracks, the instruments combining to create a cacophonous – but not entirely chaotic – experience.
Just looking at the running times of the songs (the shortest clocking in at just over eight minutes) should give you a bit of a clue as to the kind of journey you’re going to be embarking on here and opener Attraction Vulgarity doesn’t disappoint in this respect. It could itself be at least five separate songs, such is the sprawling world of despair it conjures. It starts with creeping, John Carpenter-esque synths echoing out into the void, before the deeply guttural growl of vocalist and drummer Jared Moran accompanies the dirty, downtuned riffs of guitarist Nicolas Turner and bassist Anthony Wheeler on a ride straight into the deepest bowels of Hell.
Second track Swallowed begins in a more traditional death-doom vein, but still with wailing, feedback-heavy leads arcing over and through the slow chug of the bass and drums. In places, this is reminiscent of BLOOD INCANTATION or AUTOPSY and, like those bands, DWELLING BELOW manage to create a real sense of (cosmic) horror with their sickening blend of old school blackened death metal and crushingly intense doom; the sound of something that should not be crawling forth from beneath the hills.
Sheltered Acceptance is an epic, doom-heavy closing track and is as close as this album comes to something more traditional, starting off with an almost PARADISE LOST-esque intro and as the song continues there are real hints of melody bursting through the sludge, riffs that return and repeat again, almost (but not quite) giving the sense of a traditional structure for the madness to anchor itself to. In fact, after a couple of listens it becomes even more impressive to think that a lot of this song was improvised in the studio.
This is a hugely impressive debut, which improves even further with multiple listens. It is packed with atonal, horror-inducing symphonies which slither into every crevice of your body, laced here and there with strange and chaotic psychedelic twists, pulsating like some awful cosmic parasite awakening in your brain. Its experimental and extreme nature might mean it is too much for some metal fans to stomach but if you like your death metal progressive, doom-laden and utterly filthy then you owe it to your ears to give this one a go.
Rating: 8/10
Dwelling Below is set for release on December 8th via Transcending Obscurity Records.
Like DWELLING BELOW on Facebook.