Day: April 22, 2018

We had met Shrine Of The Serpent on the occasion of their split album with Black Urn, and received more than positive impressions. The passage from the two tracks we played last year (although long) to a full length of almost an hour hides more than one trap, but the Portland trio didn’t make any calculations and gives us a sludge death doom that doesn’t give discounts and leaves no doubts or uncertainties about the evil intentions that animate ours. Entropic Disillusion unravels following impulses that bring us back to the very first Cathedral, as mentioned also on the occasion of the split (from which the deadly Desecrated Tomb is recovered), with variations on the theme that are not provided by any script, which means listening to a dull and pounding riffing to support the growl of the guitarist and founder of the band Todd Janeczek. Shrine Of The Serpent grind notes without interruption, allowing only a few pseudo-melodic flashes of guitar, compressed between the muddy gait of a sound that is lymph for fans and pure poison for those who already love little doom, let alone in these clothes. The ambient drone of Returning is the active pause that introduces the rare heaviness of the riffs of Epoch Of Annihilation, followed, as if it were the ideal continuation, by the final Rending The Psychic Void. Cathedral of Forest Of Equilibrium (skimmed of any psychedelic temptation, though), of course, but also Winter, Evoken or the more recent Bell Witch, all converge in a monolith that leaves no way out from every aspect, including the beautiful cover. In the case of Shrine Of The Serpent, rather than the birth of a new star, it is better to speak of the appearance of a new musical black hole, whose sound density inevitably tends to infinity.

2018 – Memento Mori