Thursday, January 25, 2018

Full Length Review: HOODED MENACE Ossuarium Silhouettes Unhallowed

Ossuarium Silhouettes Unhallowed
Release date: January 26, 2018
Hooded Menace continue to expand their sonic assault on Ossuarium Silhouettes Unhallowed in much the same way Darkness Drips Forth saw the band hit their comfort zone and take a more epic and sprawling approach to each Death Doom laden passage. Start to finish, as an entire piece of art, as an album not a stand-alone song is the best way to indulge upon the brilliance that is Hooded Menace. From the first note to the last, the band takes you on a ride into the darkest depths of despair and darkness with a precision and masterful grace that evolves and expands as you watch the seconds tick by on your stereo. There is a brooding continuity that permeates their latest work, and the songs never suffer from the pitfalls of redundancy or repetition that can sometimes plague the style. Each piece blends and bleeds seamlessly into the next while also twisting and turning within itself in a way that commands and controls your attention while never staying in the same evil dwelling place for too long for you to lose interest or turn away. There are moments of a slower nature that pull you in and subtly chew away at your soul, and there are moments where things pick up when you least expect them to that remind you not to trust this false sense of security by pummeling you out of your Doom-induced slumber. The entirety of their horror-laced bleak sonic approach feeds on itself and never stops regurgitating its innards outwards for the listeners enjoyment. With some added layers here and there, and the integrity of their brand of Death Doom remaining intact, they manage to refine their craft once again into an entity that cannot likely be controlled anymore by mere mortals. And they guide it like they've got the Hounds Of Hell on a very short leash. It's as if they have seized the ship sailing in the fiery subterranean depths of the Underworld and captained by Hades himself, as they grip the wheel and never look back with a course set on proving that artistry is alive and well, and boundaries or limits have no place in the genre that so many bands stagnate in. Ossuarium Silhouettes Unhallowed will stand the test of time and force their contemporaries to keep up as they exceed expectations and demonstrate that the imagination is the only true limit to where the music can go. 9/10 -Alan Lisanti

Track list:
1. Sempiternal Grotesqueries
2. In Eerie Deliverance
3. Cathedral of Laybrinthine Darkness
4. Cascade of Ashes
5. Charnel Reflections
6. Black Moss
7. Sorrows of the Moon (Celtic Frost cover/bonus track)

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