Execration     

Odes Of The Occult
Duplicate Records 2012

Overshadowed by Norway's black and thrash scenes, the country is producing a crop of impressive death metal bands that are taking old school foundations and adding their own brand of weirdness and obscurity to the mix.  One of the latest to hit my ears is Execration and their most recent album, Odes Of The Occult.  Stylistically it falls between the morbid brutality of Obliteration and the boundary pushing dementia of Diskord.  Album opener Ode To Obscurity is a menacing, groove laden beast.  Riffs form circular patterns and drench you in rotting gore before leaping into some inventive guitar patterns that seem to pierce your mind with their eerie notes.  Distant mechanical sounds imbue the following blasts with a haunting aura on Unction.  The near grind riffing and bizarre passages that follow bring to mind some of the madness inducing songwriting of Carbonized.  A galloping pace and a riff oriented near-melody eviscerate the listener as Entheogen gets underway.  Some atmospheric melodic passages around the 4:20 mark summon comparison's to Darkthrone's Soulside Journey.  The 10+ minute epic A Crutch For Consolation is divided in half musically.  The first half is alternates between slowly shifting weirdness and explosions of savage violence.  Lightning fast fretwork scorches my ears like a laser before the track once again settles into gloomy midtempo passages.  A plodding, long funeral march of extreme morbidity best describes the second half of the song.  It almost borders on funeral doom, that's how slow and oppressive the portion of the track is.  Terror-inducing notes subtly work their way into your mind on the second instrumental of the album, track 9.  Using a straining guitar to achieve the same effect, Left In Scorn invades your subconscious in a manner not unlike Autopsy.  That is until the song explodes into Stockholm styled death metal around the 2 minute mark.  Dissonant and unharmonic sounds enter into the rumbling mix like a lurking fiend and the bass guitar becomes as ropey as a hangman's noose.  This is one of the best death metal albums I have heard in a long time.  Everyone who obsesses over morbid brutality and obscure derangement needs to get Odes Of The Occult immediately!!!