The album that should bring these Polish adepts the recognition they’ve long deserved…
Released by Temple of Torturous Records (Facebook, Website) on 18 November 2016 and reviewed by Jason Guest
At it since 1993 and with five full lengths to their name, Poland’s Eternal Deformity are a well-oiled machine as adept at dispensing doom as they are at painting it with many a gothic and sometimes progressive angle. With their sixth album No Way Out first released independently this time last year, Temple of Torturous have taken it upon themselves to bring this much-deserving band and their album to a much-broader and much-deserving audience.
Like its predecessors, No Way Out is top quality from the outset. Instrumental opener ‘I’ echoes across the barren and broad soundscape that the rests of the tracks are soon to fill with a blend of doom, death, melody and malady, all beautifully woven together into a rich and intense tapestry. Grand and majestic, the structures and the arrangements are sophisticated and their complexity balanced with power and passion.
The strain of doom summoning ‘Esoteric Manifesto’ into existence, the track fights its way forward through an arduous journey, the determination embodied by every beat, every riff, and every utterance imbuing the track with an undeniable integrity. There’s nothing rushed and nothing sluggish about the track’s slow build. And as refined as that track is, so it goes for ‘Sweet Isolation’, its progressive leanings enhanced by the echoes of 90s Opeth harmonies, black metal barks and well-crafted lead work.
At just over 10-minutes, ‘Reinvented’ plots an enthralling journey through the heavy, the melodic, the atmospheric and the deliberating, all seamlessly entwined and making for one of the best tracks on the album. And as if in need of serenity, the ambient and acoustic ‘Mothman’ carries us from the storm, through the peaceful and into the magnificence of ‘Mimes, Ghouls and Kings’ and closer ‘Glacier’. By now, any other band would begin repeating themselves, regurgitating riffs and resurrecting well-worn structures, but not this band. 7- and 10-minutes each, Eternal Deformity push themselves even further and not once do they run dry or fall foul.
Taking the many opportunities for experimentation that an album offers, with No Way Out, Eternal Deformity prove themselves adept musicians and adept songsmiths that embrace and enjoy the challenges that open space affords them. What is surprising – perhaps even shocking – is that all of the band’s albums have been released independently and picked up by a label later on. Why no label has signed them up and stuck with them is beyond me. Even the most cursory listens to their previous releases demonstrate a band that has long had much to deliver and has long deserved wider recognition. Long overdue, No Way Out more than deserves to be the album to bring it to them.
9 out of 10
Track list:
- I
- Esoteric Manifesto
- Sweet Isolation
- Reinvented
- Mothman
- Mimes, Ghouls and Kings
- Glacier
