Review by Sandre the Giant
Well, we’re only a week or so into 2024 and we’ve got our first taste of what Transcending Obscurity have planned for us with the new Saevus Finis record, ‘Facilis Descensus Averno’. A dissonant and dark death metal album with black metal influences is promised, and with the label’s past record in this exact genre I’m expecting the work of this Portuguese trio to be exactly that. High hopes are in place…
The scalding riffs of ‘Scourge of Humanity’ open the record with a definitive, dark purpose; a passionate pounding of dissonant doomy death metal. Oh the alliteration! But it is what Saevus Finis have absolutely perfected immediately here; squalling Gorguts-esque riffs with splintering atonal melodies in the vein of Ulcerate, scattering dissonance and brutality all over tracks like ‘Thou Hast Destroyed Thyself’ and the punishing, haemorrhaging riffs of ‘Those Who Aid and Abet’. A guttural, primal fear rises up inside you during the miasmic ‘Corporeal Malfeasant’, really hitting home that not all death metal sounds like this, but a lot of these Transcending Obscurity records do. Carving a new precipice on the label’s cliff face of incredible bands, a Mount Deathmore if you will, except its all non-Euclidean geometry and Chthonic symbolism. There’s also plenty of unorthodox black metal influences here too, playing chaotic havoc with some of the nastiness in ‘Overrun by Pests’. Black metal has been playing with atonal chaos for years, and death metal is finally starting to catch up.
‘Facilis Descensus Averno’ is a triumph of pure, chaotic darkness. It is a term I come back to a lot while listening to this record; chaos. Saevus Finis make music that you have no idea where it is going, where the next note or scream is coming from. All that is for sure is that it will be from a place of malevolence and darkness. Transcending Obscurity have started with a blinder this year, and while it is far too early for AOTY chat, this will surely ride high on my list throughout the year.
https://www.facebook.com/realsaevusfinis
https://saevusfinis.bandcamp.com/album/facilis-descensus-averno
https://transcendingobscurity.bandcamp.com/
The Killchain 