Review by Sandre the Giant
If the visceral album art to the debut, self titled record from Dwelling Below isn’t enough of a warning for what lies beneath, the band members having links to a variety of brutal, ugly metal bands like Acausal Intrusion and Hollowed Idols should give you more than a hint. ‘Dwelling Below’ is out in December through Transcending Obscurity and looks to plumb the most abyssal depths of madness, for fans of Incantation, Winter and Autopsy.
‘Attraction Vulgarity’ opens with a suitably slow, tension building swell of guttural growls, groaning riffs and atonal melodies. A swollen, shifting miasma of poisonous riffs, suffocating atmosphere and unholy vocals, Dwelling Below live up to their name with each eldritch riff that is summoned from their abyssal lair. There are points where the music gets faster and yet still seems to be moving at that tectonic pace, such is the dark psychedelica that laces their every move. It is like one of the worst trips you’ll ever experience. ‘Swallowed’ sways and throbs with dissonance, a looming hypnotic trance of rending death/doom that is designed to terrify. As it builds to its crescendo, guitar tones tearing loose in the solar winds, it reaches a zenith of suffering. ‘Emergence Sublimation’ is the album’s epic (well, they are all pretty epic to be fair), a ten minute plus tide of dissonant, atonal riffs sweeping against the rocks, each moment building upon the previous, becoming a rich tapestry of hellish guitar leads and cloying atmospherics.
Closing with the churning, sludgy death march of ‘Sheltered Acceptance’, the final moment for the tension to release and expunge our pain, Dwelling Below have really crafted something special here. A horrendous slab of the ugliest, most awe-inspiringly uncomfortable death/doom you may ever hear, ‘Dwelling Below’ is a record that thrives on a sense of unease, on which it builds slow motion devastation and dark, morbid atmospheres. There’s death/doom that is positively sepulchral in tone, and then there is this, which feels like the sepulchre exists beyond time and space, somewhere out there in the dark where the spawn of unspeakable things are ready to follow you back to our world. I think there’s a new contender atop my albums of the year list…
https://www.facebook.com/dwellingbelow
https://dwellingbelow.bandcamp.com/album/self-titled
https://transcendingobscurity.bandcamp.com/
The Killchain 