DESORATION - NON

NON begins with Latentis, a short instrumental intro. It starts off sparse, but with an immediate sense of urgency. A single low piano note leads into slowly building strings and percussion, and the piano soon joins the layers of sound. It builds in waves of intensity, providing a launchpad for the first single from the album, Those Who Dwell In Darkness. Fast and punchy whilst also dark and brooding, it has a monster of a periodic halftime groove that offsets the speed and fury of the surrounding sections. If this doesn’t grab you by the earholes and convince you that you need more Desoration in your life, it’s hard to imagine what will. Next up is Beyond the Veil of Sleep. Straight in with a simple but solid riff for the first few bars, it erupts into an arpeggio riff over a blistering blast beat, underpinning Aean Campbell’s powerfully guttural vocals. This is a track redolent with hooks, and full of strength. There’s a very tasty descending guitar line in the chorus, and a guitar solo infused with melody and skill. A brief halftime mid-section with a reimagining of the intro riff stands out amongst the viciousness of the track.

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Cruel World Order begins with great heaving slabs of guitar and percussion, which unfold into a punishingly fast beat. One could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that drummer Bennett Jones isn’t actually human, possibly some freakish hybrid of machine and vastly superior alien lifeform. This is a considerably darker track than its predecessor. Aean’s vocals continue to impress; despite sounding like he’s gargling a chainsaw every word is clear and crisply enunciated. It’s obvious how much time and energy has gone into constructing and refining these songs. The final seconds of this track give way to a sound that could possibly be described as a combination of a human scream, and an incoming ICBM. This band simply doesn’t let up for a second. Deadened and Scarified has another simple but highly effective intro, a snotty guitar chug becomes a big nasty groove. If you can listen to this and not have a completely involuntary stank-face on by the 8-second mark, you need to have serious words with yourself, and probably go back to Metal School. 40 seconds in, however, and it’s a return to breakneck speed, the musical equivalent of having your face forced into an industrial blender. This is a band who most definitely worship at the twin altars of The Riff and The Hook. After coming for you like a tornado, Deadened and Scarified takes you back to the stank-zone for its final moments.

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Track 5 is Excoriating Reality. Holy vader’s fist, this album just keeps getting more and more in your face. Whatever was done to Desoration to rile them up, they’re here to wreak revenge in spades, no quarter given. This track charges at you like a demon-possessed wild boar and hoists you aloft on slavering tusks, before flinging you, battered and bruised, face down in the dust with its abrupt halt. The Befouled Ziggurat of Non is suitably epic sounding, befitting of such an epic sounding title. This is an appropriately huge-sounding track, rightly so given that it’s as close as it gets to being a title track for the album. There is a haunting quality to this one. The musicianship, in the choruses in particular, is borderline insane. This band is phenomenally skilled. Interitus, The Herald of Ruin sounds like an avalanche of boulders that’s been wound up to triple speed. The intro is a low creepiness overlaid with choral stabs before the rockfall begins. At the 2-minute mark, it unexpectedly takes a brief mellow and clean turn, this is but a short interlude before the journey of pummeling picks up again. There’s some astonishingly good riffing in this track.

Corporealisation Threshold has a beginning of sombre arpeggios with subtle percussion stabs and keyboard swells, before exploding into a hell-bent riff-fest. Choral stabs rear their heads again around the 1 minute mark over a brief halftime section. The second half of this track sounds like a battle tank formation crushing its foes under blood-stained treads, massively heavy and devastatingly relentless. There’s a jarring quality to the start of Singularity Ritual, followed by more whiplash riffing and some intense drumming ability. At the halfway mark it briefly takes on a more rock-like approach, perhaps to let Bennett catch his breath for the next bout of utterly inhuman performance. The guitar solo is filled with feel, and with a strong melodic sense.

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Final track Black Dawn is precisely ten minutes of furious metal with many changing moods. What a stunning way to bring this album to a close. A triumphant tour de force, a bold statement of intent from a band that has found its legs and has sallied forth in a no-holds-barred fashion, in order to take the world, if not the entire solar system, by storm. Black Dawn is by far the longest track on NON, but there’s never a dull moment… much like the rest of the album, to be fair. Every element, every mood, every feel, technique, and device already explored on the album is distilled into Black Dawn, as if to present a calling card that states exactly who Desoration are, and what they’re capable of. And that capability is incredibly impressive.

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NON is a mighty debut album, so good, in fact, that I don’t envy them having to eventually follow it up. With what’s on display here though, they most assuredly have the goods to do so. Listen to it, love it, play it again and again, and thank me later.

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REVIEWED BY Peter K Malthus

Published by Music NZ

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Website

https://www.muzic.nz/reviews/album-review-non/

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