It’s been a full six years since Dead Congregation released their last full-length album, Graves of the Archangels. That record blew the roof off what people thought “death metal” could be, and with it, Dead Congregation elevated the sound to nearly unsurpassable heights before stepping back to watch the next wave of “old school death metal” surge and strain towards the bar that they’d set. Now that the sound they helped reintroduce to the masses has reached critical mass and started to fall back out of favor, these godless Hellenics have returned to reap what they have sown—and show the rest of ‘em how it’s done.
Promulgation of the Fall is coming from a band entering into its tenth year of existence with an impeccable reputation and slavishly devoted fanbase, and they've spent the past six years fine-tuning the eight compositions on this release. That they’ve spent the better part of that decade engaging in fairly regular live performances shows in the writing, too, so songs sound tighter and the tension at work is impeccable. The four men leading Dead Congregation have always held themselves up to the highest standard of quality in this band, and this latest release is no different, showcasing the band at its most confident and powerful. Vocalist/guitarist A.V.’s imperious growl has never sounded stronger, the whole rhythm section locks together like clockwork, and the guitars are caked in gritty, graven tones that entice as much as they intimidate.
After “Only Ashes Remain” comes roaring to life on the back of V.V.’s maniacally precise drumming and a thoroughly commanding central riff, title track “Promulgation of the Fall” ambles in with its prolonged intro and trundles along in saturnine fashion until the bottom drops out near the end and we’re treated to a satisfying taste of Dead Congregation’s loyalty to the low end. It’s an odd sequencing decision, as “Promulgation...” sounds like the clear choice for album opener, but it makes for one of the album’s nearly nonexistent missteps. “Serpentskin” starts off fast and furious, but its real power lies in the mid-song break, when it slows down to an unbearably slow, ponderous groove. It’s the kind of tricky maneuver that is incredibly easy to screw up, but Dead Congregation make it look like an afterthought. Most of their songs follow that same formula in different measures: some songs linger within that thick, sluggish tempo, while others revert back to blunt force in quicksilver blasts, but that same comfortable fast-slow-fast dynamic pervades the entirety of this dark, doomy death metal opus. It has worked for them in the past, and it surely works just fine now.
Unlike so many of their Greek brethren, Dead Congregation has never stood for innovation. Instead of pushing extreme metal's boundaries into strange new dimensions, A.V. and his cohorts have concentrated on perfecting a very specific sound that invokes a very specific atmosphere, drawing from a very specific sonic template in order to achieve that vision. That’s not to say that Promulgation of the Fall is boring or homogenous; on the contrary, it offers an embarrassment of riches for the death metal connoisseur, and plenty of surprises for the newly initiated. The guitar work on"Immaculate Poison" is ripped straight from Slayer's earliest, most evil efforts, and when the screaming solo and rippling fretwork on “Nigredo” slices up and out through the quagmire of distortion or apocalyptic chords of album closer “From a Wretched Womb” come howling from the void, it’s clear that there is something special happening here. Most importantly, they leave us wanting more.
