ALBUM REVIEW: The Great Demise – Sodomisery

SODOMISERY are a band that look poised to become the next big death metal act to come out of Sweden. With their debut, self-titled EP, the band laid down some incredibly solid foundations for their sound, taking a more modern and bleak approach to the genre, turning heads and setting a lofty bar for the band to overcome. Their debut album, The Great Demise, expands on the dark and fierce sound on display on their first record, making for an incredibly impressive and powerful album.

Reapers Key is a solid start to the album, providing a rhythmic, powerful piece of music punctuated with tight melodies and acerbic vocals. It’s a track driven by some great guitar work and authoritative drumming, with a soaring, epic sound making everything sound gargantuan, setting a lofty bar for the rest of the album. Into the Cold is much more driven by excellent and far more adventurous lead guitars and a monstrous vocals, with some particularly punishing drums adding an intense, frenzied edge to the proceedings, resulting in a bleaker, more ferocious offering. Sacrifice ratchets up the aggression even further, with meaty rhythms and discordant leads building a much more primal sound right out of the gate, with domineering vocals and steady percussion only serving to make this song sound all the more visceral, giving this a darker and heavier feel than the first two tracks.

The Messenger sees a shift in the albums sound to a much catchier, more melody focused approach, with some brilliant, imaginative leads making this song instantly memorable, with the dense, underlying groove of the guitars and bass giving this song a robust backdrop. The vocals carve through the mix, contrasting the much thicker sound with a noxious rasp, something which works incredibly well here.

In The Void, with its brooding, hypnotic opening hook, immediately grabs the listeners attention, and begins to utilise more jarring elements and sudden time changes, giving this song much more modern, but nonetheless savage, feel. Much like the previous tracks, it’s an extremely captivating slab of death metal with some great thrash moments peppered throughout. The Great Demise, a slow but monolithic affair, has a large and sprawling sound and more subdued leads, allowing the vocals and the rhythms to carry the song for the most part, making for another punchy and interesting piece of death metal.

Until They Burn sees the depth of the album’s sound expand a little more with the use of acoustic guitars and slick guitar flourishes, with thunderous drum beats and sparse, yet effective, vocals giving this song a much more grandiose edge. The variety of guitar styles on display here, and the more diverse range of the vocals, makes for a more immersive listen, drawing the listener in relatively quickly. Arise, the last full song on the record, is arguably the records most energetic and visceral, with the music going straight for the jugular and rarely relenting from its feral, monstrous sound from the first note to the last. With more diverse guitars and intricate, focused drums, the music manages to reach a blistering pace and a razor sharp sound that elevates it above the seven tracks that preceded it, with the acidic rasp of the vocals injecting the final, caustic exclamation point to this songs already heady sound. This, coupled with haunting, spartan addition of The Abyss, act as a fantastic conclusion to an equally impressive album.

This is an album that could be broken down into three separate parts; the first three songs being extremely solid and tight death metal offerings, the next three providing plenty of catchy and memorable hooks, and the final trio of tracks seeing SODOMISERY start to develop and diversify their sound with a few subtle elements. As a result, it proves to be a brilliant debut with a varied sound that is sure to contain something for most kinds of death metal fan. The focused and high standard of musicianship, along with the polished production, gives this whole album a very lean and aggressive sound, with very little in the way of filler, marking SODOMISERY as a band to watch closely in the near future.

Rating: 8/10

The Great Demise is out now via Testimony Records.

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