Chapel of Disease - The Mysterious Ways of Repetitive Art [2015]

Great album covers is always a major attraction for me, and are an equally good source of attraction for death and black metal bands who crave sounds of occult, doomed subterranean antiquity, but it's a shame half of the albums with great visual distinction merely gloss over the allure of their content. Chapel of Disease's 2012 debut ''Summoning Black Gods'' was fun exercise in old school death metal which went by the trajectory of Death, Pestilence, Sinister and some Autopsy, but was no real highlight in a year already stocked with excellent, creepy death metal offerings that ranged from Necrovation to Putrevore. It's a shame that most bands don't catch the gist of it in the first place. So you can bet I was a tad morose that the new album by the Germans wasn't much of a switch in color palettes, or equally ludicrous as the album title, but merely a minor readjustment of settings that prompts something of a psychedelic 70's feel into lurching old school death metal monotony.

Well, it isn't necessarily a monotony, because the Germans still do fairly good job at keeping some constancy and excitement throughout songs which go on for 6+ minutes, with insultingly enjoyable death/thrashing mania and accessibly searing guitar tones reaching back to early Pestilence. There's no denying that a sizable portion of this record dials all the way back to 1988, taking a huge slice of ''Malleus Maleficarum'' alongside it, with the rest channeling 1989-1993 at random and scraping off the 'old school' off everything from ''Human'' era Death, early Demolition Hammer to Morbid Angel, and this was one record which I felt the thrash was expressively more dominant than the death influence, particularly the fluid and blistering track ''Life is But a Burning Being'' which basically sounds like what Morbid Saint would have recorded on ''A Spectrum of Death'' if they'd been living under a stronger Teutonic influence with perhaps a dosage of Pink Floyd. Seriously, if there is any major step forward here from the debut, it's the odd psychedelia and melodic sentimentality interposed between the harsh, abrogating speed/thrash barrage and standardized old school death metal tremolos. There is a strong death/doom feel to the album that reverberates quite strongly as well, but while it makes for some good atmosphere the slower sections didn't always gel with the frantic death/thrash incursions. Despite that, the vocals, great as before, bark out like hell hounds in the night, leaving you dazed with a devilish take on Martin van Drunnen's legendary inflection.

The record is almost in conjunction with Horrendous' latest, ''Ecdysis'', which was a tour de force in the school of skin shedding and revitalization, albeit to a much larger degree than this one. The Germans are also embracing a veritable appreciation for oriental melodies, lead riffs and arbitrarily placed acoustic guitar sequences, which, though still inchoate, suggest a nice structural change which should be even  more pronounced on their third record. The ending track ''... of Repetitive Art'' is a ripping wall of semi-technical thrash riffs with haunting intro put in front of it, and resonates surprisingly well for a 10-minute monster. Again, aside from certain sequences, this album didn't made me raise my eyebrows. The drudging ''The Mysterious Ways...'' was all too boring and could as well have been replaced by an ambient sound of occult magicians high on some demoniac drug for all I care. So forget all that I said about good album covers and bad music. This is definitely a great album cover, and the music is solid, too. Maybe lacking in the visceral or aural pomp which I would seek for in 21st century old school death metal revival scheme perhaps, but nonetheless a highly listenable effort that could burgeon into something far more enthralling in the future.

Highlights:
Symbolic Realms
Life is But A Burning Life
The Dreaming of the Flame

Rating: 72,5%

Chapel Of Disease - Summoning Black Gods [2012]

As much as I was impressed by the vital, fleshy energy that the Germans Chapel Of Disease conjured with their cryptic demo that came out earlier this year, make no mistake, these vile retros are not putting anything new on the table, even though it undeniably sounds refreshing for die-hards and connoisseurs alike. That being said, the debut by the Teutonic quartet took me by surprise as they unleashed their debut via the overly frenetic oldfactory producers FDA Recotz, and to be fair, despite the limitation of imagination generated from the band's lack of variety in accumulating influences, ''Summoning Black Gods'' does not suspend the hungry listener in iron manacles of banality and delivers quite a heaving, archaic punch with a nice stretch of classic old school death metal influences a la Pestilence, Autopsy, Death, and, as we didn't have enough Swedish death metal to deal with, a splurging context of primal chainsaw ruptures.

The intake of Swedeath is fortunately in less copious amounts than you might expect, and churned up with a classy, foreboding edge, it really turns the album into a panoply of memorable compositions and semi-thrashy textures, all sewed to each other by a raw, highly nostalgic raw overtone. At times,  the band channels the harsher formulas that marginally deviate from the tremolo-laced riffing by having simpler vitality, reeking of 1988, yet what I especially love about the band is that they effortlessly eke out sepulchral hymns and they can perfectly exhibit their love for pestilential antiquities whilst carving out subtexts of these grave-ish moods, perhaps most vivid on ''Evocation of the Father'', a melodious collision of trudging grooves that has an almost Gothic appeal to it. Even though it seems the band is staking their entire momentum by replacing nearly a half of their performance with mid-paced grooving, the subtle balance in between thrash and death is measured adequately and the band is nearly always on-time in lashing just after gloomy transitions and erupt into headbang-friendly death/thrash tumult before you even realize what's going on.

Thankfully, ''Summoning Black Gods'' is infected, though not overarching in a way that could completely asphyxiate the listener. Here, cavern walls don't gradually enclose around you and decompression doesn't overwhelm; instead, as you may understand, these Germans are just staunch freaks that pursue their nostalgic masters Pestilence, Asphyx, Autopsy, Death, Morbid Angel, Vital Remains and the like, and the album is really based on letting out frivolous, encrypted and manic burden that stayed hinged inside the cranial contents of the Germans for far too long. To me, they seem like an unlikely crossover of their archaic countrymen Immortalis and their label mates Skeletal Remains, which have chosen a thicker, if not more technical approach to deviate from the same vein. While not imaginative by any means, this is probably one of the better altars built to worship the aforementioned masters over the last five years; even the vocals have condensed on the Van Drunnen timbre, and this also marks, or helps establish, a new scene for spawn new abominations to spawn and rock their way out the graveyard. A crashing rhythmic fair with a frightening edge. Definitely a nice treat.

Highlights:
Exili's Heritage
The Nameless City
Summoning Black Gods

Rating: 83%

Chapel Of Disease-Death Evoked DEMO

Demos are always cool, to me they're barers of message, showing that the demo will soon transform into a full-lenght or an EP and Chapel Of Disease's demo is no exception. Now, these guys come from Germany and you can bet that I was waiting for something intense. Since the current death metal scene is overwhelmed by Swedeath and Incatation worshippers I expected COD to formulate a similar sound, yet to my surprise, these guys actually attained the traditional sound of their thrash forefathers Kreator, Sodom and alike. With a lot of thrashing madness and energetic OSDM grooving, this demo makes a fine listen.

With just four tracks and very little variety and exploration in styles, the demo doesen't leave much to be said about except that its crushing, catchy and effective throughout. Tribulation, who choked me in perplexement  with their 2009 album ''The Horror'', could have a fair enough resemblance to this EP, considering both draw heavy influences from primal German thrash metal upon their savage death metal roots. The guitars are clean and razor-sharp, and they only enable the deliverance of the riffs more deadly. ''Sommuning The Black Gods'' is straight up German thrash metal worship, with cruchy chord sequences, and exceedingly fast incursions of pure raw aggression. You might think that such raw power and vivaciousness may terribly destroy any atmopshere, but to the opposition, ''The Loved Dead'' focuses on the doomier sound of death metal, pulluting the atmopshere with both doomy passages and tinging, somber melodies. Especially at certain moments the album attains an Asphyx sound, sounding like almost an exact replica of the band, with mid-paced grooving riffs with just slightly less heft and the immense barks of the Van Drunnen-gimmicking vocals.

Short it may be, but ''Death Evoked'' has a wide range of riffs that all flow like an everflowing stream. The message I got on this one didn't exactly deliver anything I've never heard, but gave me something fresh to listen to every once in a while since the scenes today are dominated with pure Swedeath/Autopsy worshippers. (not that I'm complaining) COD will probably release and album by the end of the year, so this time I'll know what to expect-warning COD, you better come up with something good or else.

Highlights:
Summoning Black Gods
The Loved Dead

Rating: 85%