Abysme – Strange Rites (2012)

Breaking away from the standard US Death Metal sound, today we have Abysme and their Swedish-infused mid-tempo Death Metal with their debut album “Strange Rites”. In this ten-track headbanging extravaganza, the band focuses on creating gritty sounding songs with a dash of melody, rather than blasting away at their instruments and just trying to be brutal like most bands.

The band’s early Entombed and Grave worship is immediately made present with the dark and gritty “Scribbled In Dust”. We particularly love that there are absolutely no traces of any modern DM variants in the bands raw and old-school sound. Slithering away with foul tracks like “Beyond the Seventh Door”, “Formless”, and “Annihilated Memory”, the band delivers crunchy riffs, crafty drumming and raspy growls that make their sound very authentic and quite rare these days.

Our favorite song in this release is the very catchy “We Shall Sleep”. After the initial fast-paced opening, the band nicely falls into some very catchy riffs and an overall slower paced groove. Fans of old-school Swedish DM will be completely pleased with the very traditional structure of tracks like “The Third Day” and “Fallen Colossus”. Closing with “Remarkable Conqueror”, the band again delivers very simple yet super catchy groovy sections that seem to come so natural to Abysme.

With a very traditional and old-school vibe, “Strange Rites” is actually a very well-crafted release that if full of catchy and groovy sections. The combination of mid to slow tempo sections with some more brutal parts makes this release very different than the rest and quite enjoyable to listen to. If you are a Death Metal purist and liked the older Swedish stuff, Abysme is a band you want to keep an eye out for.

Release: September 25th, 2012

Genre: Death Metal

Country: USA