‘Dissonance Corporeum’ kicks off Ectovoid’s first full length in over ten years, opening with trippy “out of the portal” kind of reverse effects and then suddenly we’re thrown down into a stygian abyss. There’s very heavy tom drums being beaten into dust, booming away like artillery while the bass peeks out between and around the guitar lines like a serpent. Excellently executed tremelo riffs and crunchy rhythm lines hold down the heft with guitars dripping in blood. Yes, this is certainly proper “Ghouls n Goblins” Death Metal, straight from Alabama USA.
Guitars are louder on this album compared to previous outings and the riffs are very in your face. Leads are soaring and glorious and don’t sound tiny at all. The production is very spacious and massive it’s a treat to hear everything laid out so crisply. Actually, this is one of the best mixed and mastered Death Metal albums I’ve heard in a long time in my opinion, it’s a real mean, loud hunk of work. The vocals are haunting calls through the void with a nice edge to them. Sparsely used higher vocals sometimes have a good touch of reverb to them and occasionally some echo effects as well.
‘It Is Without Shape…’ fades into a ponderous nostalgic old school “reflection on the surface of the water” riff while these bombastic toms bounce around and the guitars steer down a more sinister path and then these glorious guitar leads and synthesizer choral vocals come in, just epic stuff frankly. They use the church chorus vocal patch perfectly and very ominously. From the badass ‘Collapsing Spiritual Nebula’ to the unraveling spiral riffs of ‘Irradiated Self’ to the tasty solos on ‘Erroneous Birth’, there are moments all over the map that kick ass here. It closes with such a great noteworthy song as well, the seven and a half minute long ‘In Anguished Levitation’. Riff city, and the atmosphere built here is fantastic and all the band members are contributing to this crazy energy.
A step up from past work which I liked alot already, ‘In Unreality’s Coffin’ is a charging, heavy duty rip fest of an album. The solos are slick and inspired and all the band members do their thing like the pros they are at this point (and in general, look at the list of bands the members are also in). The production is a huge surround sound live experience, loud and explosive! An album to crank for years to come no doubt, hopefully it’s less than ten years before the next one there boys!
