EP REVIEW: Bound By Affliction – Final Resting Place

Members of SANCTION, SCARAB, SIMULAKRA, and more have thrown it back to the 90s as FINAL RESTING PLACE once again, with 90s tinged metallic death metal foaming over the sides of their new EP Bound By Affliction. If you happened to have listened to their debut EP Prelude To Extinction, expect more of those sludgy riffs and pummelling breakdowns, and an even greater tendency to grind you to dust upon listening. 

Psychosis delivers the opening of the record calmly if not disquietingly, before Descent To Dementia has the chance to unleash bile-spewing growls and unwavering snare-forward drums. Given that this is a death metal band made up by members from hardcore bands, it’s a given that Forbidden Knowledge dares to create an environment where spin kicks and darting two steps are fertile and welcome. 

Listening past the thick growls that imbue the EP with a throat full of hate, the drumming is a steel plated backbone, a completely immovable object and unstoppable force all in one. It can be swift like a boxer’s speed bag or it can be devastating like an earthquake, especially so during Burning Revelation. Paired with riffs that can only remind you of rooms filled with hot sweat.

The EP might only be 13 minutes, but in that time they present brutality of the highest quality, Bound By Affliction is gold standard caustic death metal. It can’t be expected for it to reinvent the wheel of the genre – that’s not the point of this homage – but the attention to detail and dedication to honour such a loved period for the members of this band make it a cauldron full of nasty nostalgia. 

Down to the little details like marking this release down as released in 1999, they become a connection between their influences from that decade and people younger than themselves that might not have explored the rich catalogue of bands that thrived playing metallic hardcore-tinged death metal. It’s one thing to honour the bands that they love, but placing themselves side by side to them not only presents FINAL RESTING PLACE as a hidden gem, but they are a portal to even more, sometimes forgotten, bands of the 90s. 

Rating: 8/10

Bound By Affliction is out now via DAZE

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