Tomorrow a new entity will leave its first mark on the elite of European underground extreme music. And what a mark it will be. Mysterious Scottish dark death metal cult ORDER OF DECAY emerge from the abyss with their debut full-length album, and first recording ever, Mortification Rites, releasing tomorrow June 2 2023 on LP, CD, tape, and digital formats via Sentient Ruin, and today we’re excited to bring you this monster in full via an exclusive full album premiere, behold:
While the name may be new, these guys are no newcomers, rather veterans of their scene, remaining voluntarily anonymous, so as to let the music be the sole thing that shall speak on their behalf and convey their talents and visions. “Mortification Rites” packs in forty-six minutes of tenebrous, colossal, and crushing death metal. But “death metal” is a highly simplistic tag to use for this band. The atmospheres are sprawling and imposing, the tempos at times reach the comatose, dragging misery of doom, and the esoteric mutterings that scar the work throughout bring to mind the ominous and sinister ways of black metal. In essence, yes, “Mortification Rites” has it all: the neck-breaking animalistic intensity of death metal, the contemplative and hopeless abysses of doom, and the darkness of black metal, all beautifully interwoven into a cryptic heirloom of esoteric, occult sonic surrealism.
What transpires most is the band’s own UK underground doomed death metal tradition shrouded in a gothic aura, think Indesinence, Cruciamentum, or Esoteric. But interestingly the rest is something more traceable back to Finnish death metal, particularly in the paced, catchy heaviness of Krypts, and the bleak violence of Desolate Shrine. So you know what you are getting hit with here: death metal that is both catchy and ominous, both abstract and at times also incredibly direct, and a record that oscillates dangerously between spine-breaking intensity and slow, spectral, hallucinatory ambiance.
“Mortification Rites” releases tomorrow June 2 2023 on LP, CD, tape, and digital formats via Sentient Ruin and can be obtained HERE or HERE.
