You know what’s the best kind of death metal? That brooding kind of death metal that instills a sense of fear and ominous foreboding in the listener, as if his last hours will come with the dawn and his worthless corpse will be reduced to dust and ash in the early morning rays as they pierce the night sky and soar over the horizon. Few bands can ever really achieve this sense of dread and depth in death metal outside the death/doom of acts like Coffins and Winter or the dark death metal of masters like Incantation.

Dead Congregation can be added to that list. This Greek act immediately brings back memories of classic Incantation with their monstrous dark death metal. Graves of the Archangels opens with a slow, eldritch doomy instrumental intro and they lays into the listener with the relentless blasting of Onward to Golgotha-era Incantation (with slight hints of the rhythmic riffing of Immolation and Drawn and Quartered in songs like "Morbid Paroxysm"). It also helps that vocalist A.V. can hit those dark inflictions very much in the same vein of Craig Pillard’s classic work. And then there are the solemn, hollow moments of crushing doom riffs that Dead Congregation whip out. When Dead Congregation wants to get down, dirty, and demonic in a slow, mammoth-like fashion, they waste no time in weighing forth heavily on the listener. And Dead Congregation can master atmosphere, flinging around Gregorian chants and distortion to formulate some of the sickest, most sepulchral death metal I’ve ever heard (see the title track specifically). The end result is a record that feels as though it has ripped a portal into our world with which it shall bring forth creatures not bound by the conventions of time and space to rip open our flesh and feast on our Christian innards.

Graves of the Archangels is a must for any fan of death metal. ANY FAN. I don’t fucking care if you prefer Norther to Incantation and Winter; it is your God damn duty to pick this record up and listen to it. This is how death metal is done, and it’s utterly fucking phenomenal. Fuck yes. FUCK YES!!!!!

Review byNecro-tron