Insidiously dark and imposing Scouring the Wreckage of Time, the debut album from The Vein is a release which secretes its doom laded death bred toxins in epic oppressively consuming tombs of sound and intensity. It is an unforgiving and imaginative expanse of light snuffing enterprise which certainly feeds on the senses and fears but equally brings a fresh if putrid breath to the mixing of genres.
Created in 2010 by Altar Of Oblivion guitarist Martin Meyer Mendelssohn Sparvath and long-time friend JBP, The Vein soon expanded with bassist C. Nörgaard and drummer Thomas Wesley (both also AoO) and released debut EP Born Into Grey Domains. Fusing sinister ambiences into menacing death fuelled soundscapes the band drew in strong attention including Shadow Kingdom Records with whom their first album is also unveiled to prey on the senses. Their sound is a heavy footed predator, an unrelenting leviathan of intensity and suffocation which in open diversity stalks the two chaptered release.
Chapter I: The Poisoned Chalice opens with Pale Dawn Rising, a track which slowly hunts the senses with demanding rhythms, hungry riffs, and rapacious guttural vocal growls. It is the excellent bass sound though which catches the attention, its metallic twang unexpected and unusual in doom/death metal onslaughts and thoroughly welcome and compelling. Lurching from each inventive twist to the next with melodic imagination and atmospheric seduction making their emotive presences known, the track is an impressive start which might not exactly ignite the passions into a full fire but has them totally enthralled.
Seeds of Blasphemy continues in a similarly grievous vein, its tyrannical toxicity permeating senses and thoughts from within intensive lyrical narratives and aural provocation. It is a lung sucking emotive tsunami of sonic taunting, a sound and presence which devours the air of warmth and hope surrounding its poisonous vicinity to unveil the vilest ravenous shadows though a laborious but hypnotic consumption.
Allowing a breather and for warmth to find a foothold in the darkness the album unveils the evocative beauty of Acedia, an elegant instrumental which as melancholic and sorrowful as it is provides a ray of sun to pierce the austere climate. The Poisoned Chalice soon brings things back into the shadowed clutches of vehement intent, its primal breath and contagious toxin of a groove twisting around the psyche and emotions before the rhythms and carnivorous bass chews upon their caged submission. Absorbing and threateningly intrusive it is an immense wall of murderous imagination and passion, a voracious prowler of the senses and thoughts.
Chapter II: Born into Grey Domains is brought from even darker realms with The Great Deception, its ponderous burdensome gait pure malevolence, drums and bass laying waste with every punch and distorted note whilst the guitars unravel their own inciting and sonically honed persuasion. It is a serpentine cancer within a funereal suffocation leading to the final blackened journey of Carving a Labyrinth of Despair. Immediately drenched in a sobering gloom with an alluring yet dour guitar welcome veining its presence, the song expels a wash of sonic corruption in league with an equally despair toned intensity. The song is arguably the most impressive of all the tracks, its passage an evolving blend of light and dark with hope constantly on the run from a prowling hateful malignancy. Epic in length and presence, the track is an impressive conclusion to a very satisfying album.
Scouring the Wreckage of Time is not a release to be taken as a passing listen, its demands requiring and seizing a much more intense companionship but rewarding with a craft and invention that leaves a lingering mark and pleasure. The Vein have offered something different and inspiring to doom and death metal, a flavoursome enmity sure to find even greater depths of despair and invention ahead.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Vein/189452581105086
8/10
RingMaster 26/06/2013
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