ALBUM REVIEW: Immortalised In Death – Deadwood Lake

Formed back in 2016 as a way for front man Bruce Powell to handle the grief of the passing of his brother, Gary Powell, DEADWOOD LAKE have quickly forged a solid and impressive reputation within the black metal underground in both the UK and abroad. The band have been fairly prolific, putting out new material every year since their formation, with their debut EP Rememberance making waves within the UK scene. Their second full length, Immortalised In Death, sees DEADWOOD LAKE reach their creative zenith, producing their best work to date.

DEADWOOD LAKE start Immortalised In Death off strong with Visions From The Faded Years. It’s a focused and unflinchingly morose piece of music with plenty of impressive lead guitar and acoustic flourishes which help to get the album started on a brilliant and memorable note. The March Of Time is a dark and razor sharp slab of black metal, with tight, expansive guitars, bellicose vocals and solid drumming. The vocals shift between shrill blackened howls and thick gutturals with ease, and give this song plenty of depth and variety. Lead guitar melodies begin to dominate the sound as it progresses, and starts to incorporate cleaner tones in among the harsh distortion, punctuating the songs bleaker moments with an epic edge, making this track an early high point.

Immortalised In Death‘s title track, with its heavily acoustic opening, launches into a mid-tempo slab of hauntingly melodic atmospheric black metal with a ferocious vocal performance and grandiose riffs. After a short acoustic break, the song dives into a fantastic solo, which is followed by a much gloomier and denser motif that doesn’t lose any of the epic qualities of the first half. It’s a diverse and complex track with lots of great ideas within it, and doesn’t have a single dull second within it. Guidance is another more mid-paced, monolithic offering with some excellent lead guitar hooks and full, soaring chords, with the vocals providing a robust and powerful element to the sound. At many points, this song sounds huge, and it’s hard not to get drawn into it completely by the thoroughly engrossing musicianship and catchy riffs. This is a prime example of how to do melodic black metal right, balancing the grandiose and the aggressive sides of the side incredibly well.

My Ashes Will Remain blends jarring rhythms and pummelling percussion to create a thick sound, liberally peppered with virtuoso guitar playing. The vocals are a blend of robust gutturals and savage black metal howls, counterpointing the finesse of the guitars extremely well and resulting in a song that is in equal parts visceral and glorious. Alone I Fly, a lengthy and ethereal affair which brings in cleaner distortion, is a slow burning song that gradually builds around the initial guitar parts, before jumping into what is arguably this records most cacophonous and chaotic passage. The vocals are some of the best on the whole record, and shroud the music with a wraith like rasp that complements the expansive approach of the music. With its far more grand and epic songwriting style, it is easily one of the records best offerings, with only one or two tracks coming close to matching it.

Drowning Reality takes the template laid out on the previous song and gives it a slight psychedelic edge that gives it a haunting and hazy feel, with the jaw dropping guitars adding plenty of technical moments to the fray. It’s an almost prog metal song, with each instrument providing interesting and excellent parts to this song as a whole, giving everything on offer a fluid feel, with the vocals anchoring this track firmly within extreme metal. It’s an intriguing piece of music that refines and expands upon the musical themes on the track that preceded it. Vigils, Immortalised In Death‘s final song, is far and away the most dissonant and jarring effort from DEADWOOD LAKE, with plenty of great guitar playing adding some slick and intricate melodies to this song which do a great job of giving this song some of its most memorable moments, piercing the dark and claustrophobic sound with light and masterful sections that really bring the music to life.

There’s a lot to love across Immortalised In Death. Throughout, there’s little in the way of filler here, and each of the eight songs are stand out moments in their own right. DEADWOOD LAKE have really hit their stride with their sound and have perfected their style and songwriting culminating in Immortalised In Death working excellently, both as individual tracks and as a cohesive whole. It’s a massive set up from Forest Of Whispers and last year’s Forgotten Hymns, and is easily the band’s best output to date, cementing DEADWOOD LAKE‘s status as one of the most impressive and imaginative black metal acts in the UK scene.

Rating: 9/10

Immortalised In Death is set for release August 16th via UKEM Records. 

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