Out of the Voiceless Grave
Blinded by Lurking Fear
dB rating: 9/10
Release Date: August 11, 2017
Label: Century Media
The Lurking Fear barrel suddenly into center frame from seemingly out of nowhere like a bloodied, wall-eyed Clydesdale. Though I’d be remiss not to mention that the Lurking Fear’s composed of verifiable DM gurus (including At the Gates’ Tomas Lindberg and Adrian Erlandsson), I prefer to focus solely on the work itself, which is astonishing.
In Harry Potter-speak, Out of the Voiceless Grave functions as a sort of portkey, effortlessly forwarding the listener from their present moment to the cusp of the early ’90s; a time when bands like Carnage and Repulsion still reeked of that fetching “new cadaver smell.”
On its surface, Out of the Voiceless Grave may seem designed to merely commemorate these outfits’ best works, as well as—and most particularly—the Entombed and Dismember debuts. But the Lurking Fear’s genius lies in the fact that they draw not directly from these artists but rather from the bands that inspired them: think Master/Deathstrike, Possessed, Slayer, Nihilist…
Too young to have known what it felt like when Nuclear Blast and Earache were towheaded upstarts, vomiting knowledge on their respective coasts? Or to remember when the second-wave-of-black-metal hadn’t yet entirely unlaced its high-top sneakers? The Lurking Fear will school you.
Though I’m infatuated with every track, early favorites include the wild majesty of Emperor-esque “The Infernal Dread,” the almost dangerously loose salvo “Vortex Spawn” and, with its Autopsy flirtations and Lindberg’s charming “Marcel Schmier vocal upsqueak” (you know what I’m talking about), “With Death Engraved in Bone.”
Dig death metal? Then support this effort. Buy it on any format your filth-encrusted fingers can lay hold of, post haste. — Forrest Pitts
This review taken from the September 2017 issue. Out of the Voiceless Grave is available on CD and vinyl from Century Media.
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