Label - Brilliant Emperor Records/Sentient Ruin Laboratories
Release Date - 1 April 2022
Words- Tony Bliss
As much as the ongoing death metal renaissance is evidently a global crusade, there is little denying that Australia has been a particularly fertile breeding ground for underground extremity of late. Indeed, forming in 2015 they may not yet be on a par with some of their more widely revered native brethren such as Brisbane brutes Disentomb et al, yet Sydney born quintet Golgothan Remains are precisely the sort of filth-pedalling new breed to get tongues wagging worldwide. With 2018 debut ‘Perverse Offerings To The Void’ still ringing in our ears, the band do not look to have strayed too far from their deliciously hellish brand of abyss-delving anti-songs, these obscure Aussies just happy to ratchet up the evil, dial in a tad more weirdness and inject just a little more blasphemy for a sophomore record every inch the authentic death metal experience.
It’s true that despite being resolutely old-school in both approach and atmosphere, ‘Adorned In Ruin’ positively drips with an intangible sheen of textual ungodliness. Take for example the shape-shifting ‘Opulent Incarnation Of Persevering Torment’, which on face value recalls the malevolent power of early Immolation, yet with repeated listens reveals a somewhat deeper sense of discordant dread and woozy individualism that, as history will attest, any death metal band worth their salt will be able to capture. We quickly come to realise that this uniquely grim, pitch-black undertow affirms these lads as the real deal.
And so, for all the numerous reference points we could gesture to throughout these nine tracks, Golgothan Remains are anything but merely the sum of their influences. Opener ‘Veneration Of Carnal Blasphemy’ lunges at us like classic Incantation before devolving into a surreal - and terrifying - midsection, replete with some mournful wolf howling and black metals bleak and feral spirit. Elsewhere, ‘The Malign Hordes Of Aborrence’ is built on a rampaging, mid-paced blood ‘n’ guts attack, but with a consistently growing mood of creeping dread and purpose-driven devilry which acts as a neat summation of that sense of emblematic ‘otherness’ permeating every second of this record. If you like your death metal cleanly constructed and polished, look elsewhere. For everyone else, grab your crucifix and plunge yourself headfirst into this glorious, unholy nightmare.
8/10
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