Grief Symposium – …In The Absence of Light (Recommendation)

England seems to be the perfect place to spawn great Metal bands at the moment. After Heriot and Helpless crushing it last year, it is now Grief Symposium‘s turn to twist some heads off the listeners shoulders.

Although being deeply rooted in Death Metal, Grief Symposium throw everything from Sludge to Doom Metal and even Ambient (the more the awesome closer “The amber kiss of the sun“) in one boiling pot of liquid hellfire and pour it over the listener. Seamlessly, they switch and sway between one heavy genre to the next and finally pat the head with a quiet choral outro (“In The Shadow of the Sleeping Monarch“).

“Temple of Decay” and the first single “Veil of Transformation” are the shortest and most straightforward songs here and they sandblast at least three layers of facial skin off within 3,5 minutes. But Grief Symposium are at best when they take their time to test the limits of genre boundaries. The aforementioned “In the Shadow of the Sleeping Monarch” and “The Amber Kiss of the Sun” take the cake for me. Those roughly 30 minutes are the quintessence of what makes Grief Symposium awesome. Like stumbling through hard-hitting waves in pitch black darkness, only to see and feel the warm light at the end of the tunnel.

Just like last year, Church Road Records set a high standard for every Death Metal release to come this year. Grief Symposium will surely remain on the high end of my short list for this year’s Metal releases!