Recitation’s debut LP, Carrion, is quite possibly the heaviest album of 2015. Since releasing a self-titled EP last year, the Danish trio has taken a more nihilistic turn, progressing from psychedelic doom into hopeless sludge. Consisting of one 27-minute song, Carrion is damn close to perfect.
The track begins with droning amplifier worship that’s punctuated by metronomic tom hits. Recitation then comes together in Khanate-esque riffage, which expands the intensely negative vibe of the beginning of the song into a chasm. The singer growls like a demented Kodiak, using old-school grind vocals to sharpen Recitation’s attack.
Just before the six-minute mark, the band unleashes a riff that will weigh on you with the same heaviness as the first time you realized that we’re all destined to die. Backed by solid, no-bullshit drumming, the guitar and bass induce seismic tremors with abusive chugging and glass-shattering melodic notes. The riff sounds like an old tank driven by Stephen O’Malley, Jimmy Bower and Bill Ward as it rolls through the trenches of a post-apocalyptic battlefield.
After trudging through a few sections of similar nastiness, the drummer leads Recitation into blackened death metal with a relentless double-bass groove. Rather than feeling like a random curveball, this metallic warfare organically rises from the sludgy depths of Carrion. The album quickly dives back into vitriolic tar, and Recitation fills the remaining 17 minutes (all of the above happens during the first third of the song) with grooves and riffs that will break down your psyche like a mouse in a jar of battery acid.
Carrion is uncompromising and directly to the point. Simply put: if you like heavy music, buy this album.
