It just occurred to me that I don’t listen to Norwegian death metal often. Outside of Cadaver and Diskord, I actually can’t remember the last Norwegian death metal act I listened to. I love their black metal, blackened thrash, avant garde, and progressive acts, but honestly I rarely ever touch their death metal. And this isn’t a conscious act, mind you; I’ve never intentionally done it.

Thankfully, my first jump back into the Norwegian brand of death metal is a damn good one. Execration (not to be confused with the brutal death metal act in the US of the same name) have unleashed a veritable slab of evil, darkened, ghastly death metal with their first full length Syndicate of Lethargy. Execration go for a weird hybrid of death metal sound. They primarily take old school death metal (think a merging of Autopsy and a couple of general Swedish or Finnish death metal acts), meld it with the atmosphere of US dark death metal (Incantation, etc.), throw in a tiny amount of brutal tendencies occasionally, and spice it up with some of their black metal countrymen’s harmonics here or there. The end result is an utter cacophony of sound: riffs ranging from speeding death to slow, doom-y dirges, dirty, guttural vocal croaks, and a thick overall sound, choking the air with vile pestilence and carrion. If you like your death metal disgusting, ugly, and massive in size, Syndicate of Lethargy is probably the album you’re going to massively jerk off to this weekend while watching CAT-III horror films you got on shitty bootleg DVD’s.

I don’t remember the last time I listened to Norwegian death metal, but it definitely wasn’t as good as this. After Execration, I might start actively looking again.

Review byNecro-tron