Here’s a short, tasty review for a short, tasty, 20 minute, 4 song EP from the always reliable FDA Records. Dead Chasm is an Italian trio with members from a number of mid-tier/obscure Italian acts like Kadaver, Torment, Funest, Stench of Profit, and others. But they have come together to form a very impressive debut EP of churning, murky Dark Descent-ish death metal with a slight Swedish stench thrown in.
Lying somewhere between Corpsessed’s miasmal, sometimes doomy churn and Entrails’s beefy, Stockholm HM 2 sound (courtesy of Italy’s Peter Tagtgren, Carlo Meroni), The 3 original songs and cover of Nirvana 2002‘s “Slumber” (another clue as to the band’s influences) bring forth a pretty damn solid entry to the genre and Italian death metal.
Opener “Carved into Obscurity” starts with an impressive, menacing double bass trundle and HM 2 heft laced with icky feedback and ends with a damn good, sickly, doomy crawl. “Spawned in Desolation” enters the fray with a dense, slower riff before exploding with that murky, Corpsessed like a torrent of heft. its very very well done, and pretty oppressive, and when combined with the more Stockholm leaning production, carries a lot of weight.
“Left Unknown” initially starts with a more dreamy, psychedelic, doomy, Morbus Chron vibe that it injects here and there amid more vile, heaving heft. The Ep ending cover of Nirvana 2002′s “Slumber” from their 1990 demo, Disembodied Spirits, is the more up-tempo and typically ‘Stockholm-y’ of the tracks with the expected canter and the production highlights the more Swedish influence.
In all, a very solid introductory EP from a band I’ll be looking forward to output from.
