Been digging Desecresy since ‘The Doom Skeptron’, and while they’ve never threatened to become my favourite band their dense, dank, atmospheric death metal has rarely disappointed. It appears that Tommi Grönqvist and Jarno Nurmi parted ways at some point after 2015’s ‘Stoic Death’, leaving the former in sole control of the band’s sound and direction. While being a one-human band is a path fraught with difficulty, Grönqvist seems to have pulled the feat off admirably. The bold, boxy riffs merge with the gloomy leads, the vocals rumble up from some ageless pit and the songs have been edited down so as to achieve a balance between succinct, limb-rending brutality and cloying ambience. From time to time things hit a minor hurdle (the straight-up blasts don’t work quite so well, for example), but overall it’s another enjoyable slab in the Grave/Demigod vein, and a reassuring sign that things’re in safe hands even if the band has been whittled down to vanishing point.
