Doom, death and rot! If music could smell, this would reek of putrid decaying human filth and something weird, that would only by analogy be called as a smell at all. These are the things that Helsinki, Finland-based death/doom metal band God Disease offer on their debut album 'Drifting Towards Inevitable Death'. One should not expect anything beautiful here.

But fuck me if some of those guitar melodies aren't just that! They are alluring in otherworldly, peculiar way. Like delirious dreams where something unexplainable is calling a listener, and then crawling under skin and haunting until the end of time. If you noticed the H.P. Lovecraft reference on the first paragraph, let me tell you that it wasn't there by accident. These coffin texts are very much influenced by the legendary horror writer from early 1900s.

Like tall prisoning walls, the rhythm guitars rumble with ominous power. Occasional tremolo riffing breaks the sluggish breathing of these sludgy chords. The guitar melodies do happen a lot, leading the listener to inviting yet nightmarish strange path towards lands beyond the veil of human comprehension. Melodiousness is a mixture of Finnish and British doom, death and epic heavy metal strains that have left their echoing mark to the fabric of time, now emitting their essence here, even three decades later.

The bass guitar is a monstrous entity of low energy, pulsating and booming with massive energy make make atoms shift. The drums provide slow and tom-heavy beats for marching dead, and an occasional double kick drum bit. The low guttural and slimy vocals are the sound of dead eternally sleeping in their moldy crypts. The vocals aren't happening but perhaps 40% of time, so the use of guitar melodies is understandable.

The music often carries ritualistic feel, and can be mantra-like. Not droning, mind. There are new parts and elements materializing every now and then, and oftentimes the music is in a state of mutation, like an organic pile of matter that is evolving into... something, but still one wants to see what comes out of it. The song lengths are considerable, but the band were able to conjure new elements and vibes along the way. Understandably, if a listener goes thinking of something else while listening to this, it's easy to misstep and coming back to it is an arduous task. It is a monumental album, and all 50 minutes of this is not a task to be taken casually, because it won't give you a space to breathe in all its noxious potency, even though it somewhat gives up towards the ending.

Everything has reverb into it, but in no way the longest delay ever heard, everything sounds very good and well-balanced in the mix. The sound is partly rather vile onslaught to human sensory organs, which is of course more than suitable sonic presentation for these macabre tales in musical form; it is due to the rusty-sounding stringed instruments and throat-utterances mainly, as the drums are quite clean, if loud.

This will make shadows grow longer on the journey drifting towards inevitable death. Only death is real. But before the time to leave this state of being is drawing nigh, any fan of doom/death metal should sample at this.

Rating: 8 (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
12/11/2023 11:07