Cerekloth

This is the debut album from this Denmark-based death squad after a couple of EPs, and I like what they're doing here: a slow crawl to the finish line. These seven songs make up 38 minutes of pleasantly miserable, sludge-laden death metal, bringing to mind a cleaner Autopsy or a slightly more underground Obituary, getting fast (but not quite blasting) on tunes like "Within the Hollow Crown," but spending much of the album doing the slow and nasty. The insanely titled "Halo of Syringes" and similarly named "The Reaper's Instant is Our Eternity" are completely and oppressively heavy sludge/death that will appeal to fans of Funerus/psychotic loners. The production is suitably grim and bass-blasted, and the riffs fun, if not particularly memorable; the whole package is just fine indeed (especially considering the world can always use more sludgy death metal). While this isn't one we'll be talking about ten years from now, it's one that will certainly be worth exploring again a decade from now, which says something.