Having birthed a decrepit gem with their demo recording back in 2012, this trio clearly didn’t clean up after themselves, as their debut full-length sounds as if the afterbirth formed into a gelatinous horror and proceeded to strangle its condemned twin in a murderous frenzy.
Just when you thought the formidable coalescence of death and doom metal couldn’t get any more decadently primal, Sempiternal Dusk creep up behind you and shit in your coffee. Hailing from Portland and consisting of members of Shroud of the Heretic and Aldebaran, there was little-to-no hope of this being anything other than a tortuous dungeon of doom-laden depravity.
It takes five minutes for fifteen minute opener ‘Moon Beneath Hook Cross’ to go anywhere, but when in the throes of a doomed world such as this, eternity is but the flicker of a candle flame; the permeation of menacing atmosphere and down-tuned leviathan riffs shuffling by in a blasphemous, gruesome procession.
The production is suitably cavernous and lo-fi; the gutturals forged in depths unfathomable and malevolence unthinkable, with prolific drummer and vocalist Tim Call the instigator of the accursed howls. Abstaining from any form of procrastination the band deliver a full-on brutal death metal assault with intense doom inclinations; from the pacey beginnings of ‘Streams of Night’ to the overwhelming primordial nightmare that is ‘Seclusion of the Bereaved’, the seemingly unending pit of abandonment conquers all.
The thirteen minute grand abhorrence of ‘Upon the Gallows at Perihelion’ does little to quell the unmistakable sense of incessant punishment, and even when the drums step up to thrash tempo, the riffs can still be found carving themselves languorously into stone, one aeon at a time.
Sempiternal Dusk’s self-titled atrocity is a circling mass of sharks, patiently picking off the ill-fated crew of a sinking ship, one cursed soul at a time. Punishing and disgracefully repugnant, this is an entity to be fully appreciated only in a small, pitch dark room, alone. As with so much of Dark Descent’s roster, this is low-down, doom-laden and depraved as all fucking hell; the victim of its own morbidity and a willing victim to boot. Sempiternal Dusk deliver precisely what you expect them to, and that is a poisoned well of malignant blackness and torturous intent. Cleanse yourself in its putrid depths.
