THAUMATURGY (us) - Pestilential Hymns - CD

The highly anticipated 2nd full-length by this U.S. band. Thaumaturgy was spawned in the American Midwest by an enigmatic musician that goes under the alias KT, driven by the urge to play a vicious blend of dark, doom-laden, chasmic and cavernous Death Metal, taking influence from a wide range of outsider music. Thaumaturgy attempt to push the boundaries beyond the genre’s forerunners in order to invoke contemplation upon the super-mundane realms that their name implies. Previously an outright Death/Doom Metal act with a darkened edge, the band has morphed into an entity whose musical offering is crammed with furious, ripping riffs, contrasted by crushing, echoing doom passages, as well as a surprising element of dark melody, evoking comparisons to the more diabolical early bands from Sweden, such as Necrophobic and Grotesque, although combining that approach with the tenebrosity and the murkiness of Incantation and Krypts, the violent and chaotic assault of Morbid Angel, the aggressiveness of Dutch bands like Sinister and Pestilence, the modern approach of acts like Grave Miasma and Cruciamentum, and even the sheer lightlessness of bands such as Demoncy and Adversarial. Active since 2021, Thaumaturgy released its debut EP, “Charnel Gnosis”, that same year. Two years later came the full-length “Tenebrous Oblations”. Now a power-trio after the addition of TG and DS to their ranks, Thaumaturgy present their second album, “Pestilential Hymns”, and the fullest, foulest display of their still-growing strength. A descent into both despair and madness, “Pestilential Hymns” instills a warped, charcoal-coated headspace that’s strangely addicting. Riffs race and rearrange with palpitating tension, seemingly going both faster and slower simultaneously; tight but never-robotic drums keep up in kind, speaking in slithering counterpoint to that sooty riffing; touches of haunting synth occasionally linger just at the threshold of perception, poignantly highlighting the mangled melody that sometimes surfaces from this rush of crush; and then the vocals spit pain and confusion in a manner most Martin Van Drunen-esque, effectively underlining the palpably human aspect to this otherwise-alien assault. To qualify Thaumaturgy as “blackened” would not be unfair, but “Pestilential Hymns” as a (w)hole wholly feels like a Death Metal record, just one on the fringes of unorthodoxy and angularity, unbound but never belabored. Still, despite this forward-thinking approach, Thaumaturgy retain a sense of the ancient, of elder days in the underground when diabolism truly began to bloom in Death Metal. Capping this madcap experience is suitably ancient cover artwork by Daniel Hermosilla (Nox Fragor Art). This is music to mangle your mind!