The Wakedead Gathering/Ecferus split EP (2017)

I, Voidhanger records had already impressed me with a split release earlier this year, between the enigmatic Howls of Ebb and Germans Khtoniik Cerviiks, so when I saw the pairing for this next one, two of the label's talents from the Midwest US, I automatically assumed it would be another tasteful, complementary match-up which could very likely cross-over fans who hadn't been exposed to one or the other sides. Aesthetically, The Wakedead Gathering, one of the best American death metal acts to emerge over the last decade, might not seem a fit for the evolutionary black metal of Ecferus, but having been exposed to the minds of these creators on several occasions in the past, I knew they'd find a way to make it work.

I didn't know they'd make it work THIS well.

Now, to be clear, the two bands maintain their stylistic distinctions, so there's a clear divide in its presentation; one is death metal, the other black metal. It's obvious; not one of those instances where they blend the styles together in pure collaboration. But I soon got past that, because the tunes here are just SO freaking good that I almost feel sad that the tracks might not gain the same exposure they would otherwise, since in my experience splits don't always get an audience as large as full-lengths. At the same time, it offers a chance for the artists to experiment a little further, which I felt was the case for Wakedead's "The Blind Abyss", a sprawling, 11 minute sequence of roiling, hypnotic death metal patterns contrasted against bleak, minimalistic clean guitars which segment off some of the separate, Cyclopean riffing sequences. Andrew Lampe's gutturals narrate the rhythm guitar swells like text being dictated off twisted flesh, and the riffing selections vary from a crescendo of more mystical, open chords, to churning old school Floridian tremolo-picked morbidity, and some evil grooves that force the head to slowly start banging as it succumbs to the aural oblivion.

Ecferus, on the other hand, deliver three tunes, which in conjunction, amount to roughly the same length as "The Blind Abyss", and Alp does what he does best, scathing traditional black metal threaded with a more introspective and interesting lyrical inclination, not to mention the great balance of melody and savagery that he compels by keeping the riff progressions varied enough that they never lapse into endless, dull repetition. The leads are great, with an Eastern feel as in "Author of Destruction". As I mentioned on reviewing his prior full-length Pangaea, he can really tap into the primal nature of the cosmic and terrestrial themes he navigates, through that noted variation, even though a lot of the actual guitars themselves are inspired by bands like Darkthrone, Satyricon or the mighty Emperor, which some might consider fairly conventional influences. Nonetheless, he adds just enough spark of atmosphere and creativity, topped off with his raving rasps, that I think fans of thorough, elaborate black metal which hasn't flown off into total avant-garde territory should track his records down. Of the three tunes, I couldn't even pick a favorite. All well done.

And the same could be said for the split as a whole. Clearly you'll have no issue here telling the two apart, but I do feel like the material they chose works together on a listen-through, as they both tend to tap into the same visceral, primal forces for their genres and extrapolate similar shadows of the ancient, the mythological, the obscure, the cataclysmic. Production is tight all around, but never so polished that it would turn off underground extremity vultures. Another feather in the prodigious and eclectic cap that is the I, Voidhanger lexicon. Two US bands that continue to deserve your attention and support, who have great things behind and ahead of them. So why are you still here reading my flowery, meaningless scrawl? Go fetch.

Verdict: Win [8.5/10]

https://www.facebook.com/thewakedeadgathering
https://www.facebook.com/ecferus/timeline

The Wakedead Gathering - Fuscus: Strings of the Black Lyre (2016)

I did not entirely warm up to Fuscus: Strings of the Black Lyre at first, finding some of the songs like "Blood from the Earth" and "Amnioticysts" more immediately rewarding than their neighbors. But after several repeated listens, the chinks in its exoskeletal armor have begun to seal, and I'm left once again satisfied by an album which once again reaffirms that, like any other metal niche, the true appeal of death metal is in its aesthetic overtures just as much as the individual riff-craft used to compose its components. On a note for note basis, Lampe doesn't always concoct the most explosive or unique riffing passages to explore, but it's how he fashions them all together just so slightly left of center to what I normally find in my listening queue that I get all my enjoyment. So whilst I can't say this quite hit the strides he set with its predecessor The Gate and the Key, or his great Dark Circles EP, Fuscus is still something I would heartily recommend to anyone seeking sincerity in a field that has been unfortunately trampled by well-meaning devotees, whose idea of keeping the flame lit is by simply taking and handing off the torch.  

The Wakedead Gathering is instead mining the murk and gloom of its genres' creation to generate an alternate heat source, and the result is something easily identifiable, but the stuff of moldering corpses drenched in the oily damp of dense bog waters, like a death metal peat mummy which is ever so slowly rising to the surface. Suffocating, faster guitars grinding on the opacity and bloat of their death metal forebears from the early 90s, interspersed with dissonant, atmospheric passages, and subtle, super simple bass curves while Lampe introduces blends of rasps, gutturals and even some more ritualistic spoken whispers to create perhaps his most overtly 'horrific' experience to date. The standard Death and Incantation rhythm guitars cycles here are balanced against melodic textures which often espouse the melancholy of ancient Paradise Lost ("Lungwort"), and there are also spikes of antiquated, tasteful Scandinavian melodies ("The Harrowed Column") which come unexpectedly but not unwelcomed. To boot, Fuscus contains what is easily the best pure death/doom hybrid he's written yet, "An Ancient Tradition", with harmonies so funereal that I almost called up the florist, until I remembered that this was just an album I was listening to.

Right around par with much of his previously released material, this Fuscus is further evidence that The Wakedead Gathering remains one of our underappreciated, humble USDM treasures. Though the variation from record to record might not offer as much stylistic breadth and deviation as a band like Horrendous, the quality is entirely consistent, and the project's vision remains distinct beyond a lot of bands just trying to recycle Onward to Golgotha, Left Hand Path or Dawn of Possession. You might not recognize this upon first exposure, since the basis of a lot of riffs will feel familiar, but its how the songs are laid out, and the left turns they often take which weren't immediately telecast by the structure of the chords before them. The lyrics are evocative, mystical, horrific. Get this. Get everything Lampe has released under this name. He may not have published his peak, or his 'masterpiece' yet, but this is one of those cases where you're very sure it could happen at any moment, and even if such a thing were to never manifest, the journey was worth taking all along regardless.

Verdict: Win [8.25/10] (scent of moldy debris)

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The Wakedead Gathering - Tenements of Ephemera (2010)

Tenements of Ephemera was a small run release making its way to only a limited audience, so one might have been forgiven in to have missed out on it amidst the slew of old school death metal being revitalized and released this decade. That said, Andrew Lampe's material showed promise even as early on as this full-length, which resurrected the origins of the form and then immediately put his own, distinct stamp upon it; not by completely rewriting the math, but by tampering the equation to incorporate the small atmospheric touches his material has been associated with ever since on the great Dark Circles EP and subsequent albums. Whereas the same riffs here might feel less imaginative or evocative in the hands of some trendster cycling though the dustbins of the genre for inspiration, they bloom across Tenements of Ephemera like the creeping fear one might experience when reading a really great proxy for a classic horror author.

Genuine death metal, setup with a dark ambient/synthesizer and then punching through into fleshy walls of roiling, Incantation-like tremolo patterns with Lampe's ominous guttural, but before long... you're treated to your first taste of what makes this 'different', a series of varied, lurching, segments which imply both dissonant and eerie melodies to the cemetery soil beneath. Vocals are often layered between several growls to create a grotesque chorus. Individual tracks exhibit plenty of internal variation and never wear out their welcome with swollen durations replete with exhausting repetition. The Wakedead Gathering doesn't exactly tread on 'experimental', but Lampe is fully willing to flip his own script, as in "The Black Foundry", "Permutation" and other points where the progressions take on a very doom death blend, whether imbuing that into a faster paced series of riffs or cut off into an instrumental all its own like the guitar-warped "In the Offing". The beats are laid out with a lot of double bass patterns and tinny cymbal sounds, and would probably prove the least compelling element of the composition apart from the fact that they just fit the riffs perfectly.

To be clear, Tenements of Ephemera is not going to blow your roof off, or your speakers out, but it's a more subliminal, reined-in brand of pure death metal which uses its lack of complexity to create a morbid, intimate atmosphere with an almost claustrophobic cinema feel. And I admire the approach, not so much a deconstruction of the genre's foundations but a slightly alien vibe to it that is purely the purview of its author and not some prevailing trend everyone is doing, even if Wakedead can easily cross over to fans of all the Asphyx, Death and Incantation throwbacks we've been inundated with for years (and some to our great benefit, to be sure). As someone who used to originally imagine that this style of music had been envisioned by the minds of aberrations, who in turn transmitted it through the limited lens of squishy human brains, it feels otherworldly even though it's half-rooted firmly in death metal conventions. Dark Circles and The Gate and the Key were both improvements in that the songwriting became more distinct, the atmospheric licks more memorable, but this was already a great project going forward, and the gap in quality is minimal.

Verdict: Win [8/10]

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The Wakedead Gathering - The Gate and the Key (2013)

What separates Andrew Lampe's Wakedead Gathering from the lion's share of xeroxed morbid old school death metal approximations has ever been his application of compelling songwriting aesthetics to the medium. Be that a refined sense for simplistic melody over a primate punishing  undercurrent made legion by Incantation in the early 90s, or some other vocal or guitar effect rising to the surface, there is always going to be some focus in any particular song which helps it rise above the gloomy cavern core din that has been growing repeatedly redundant as it nears its second decade of nostalgic popularity. In short, if I had to short-list a dozen wayback-machine death metal abominations worth hearing from here in the States, The Wakedead Gathering would be on that list, and quite likely nearer the top than the bottom. The Gate and the Key, Lampe's second full-length, does not fail to deliver on the promise of its precursors, and gets better with each repeated spin.

Hell, I'd recommend this on the sci-fi/horror lyrical themes alone. I'm not positive if it's a unified or partial concept, but Lampe is a master of scribing a grotesque hybrid of cosmic and bodily horror sure to make one afraid for his/her life, much like you might have felt when reading the seminal works of Lovecraft or any of his spiritual successors down through the decades. It reads just as claustrophobic as it sounds, and even from the cryptic cover, which looks like a bunch of ancient pseudopods collected in some sewer manifold, the response is fear...fear and the unknown. This is further manifest through the dank, ominous gutturals that maneuver with a lot of syllabic punch over the subterranean, soil-rich rhythm guitars that serve as a womb for the apocryphal, man-ending lyrics being spewed forth. But where these are fairly commonplace aesthetics in the lieu of an Incantation, Autopsy, Immolation or Rottrevore influence, there is also a real knack for providing the unexpected. Whether it's a brisk, Eastern melody, a spike of airier dissonance, a bluesier doom death progression, or something which combines a number of these, like the fulfilling, eerie harmonies that erupt around the minute mark of "Hypgnosis", you simply can't pull your ears away. It's like an amorphous extradimensional siren in service to the Elder Gods...the creature will bewitch you with lush imagery and a taint of beauty before devouring with its many acid-slathering maws.

And none of it would work if Lampe hadn't also mastered the art of making his antiquated death metal sound eerie again, which is accomplished through the simpler techniques of tremolo picking or morbid chords. He can create a spectral, atonal immediacy ("Masquerade in Eminence") or slowly drudge away at your well being ("Vertex I - The Gate"), but either way, he's reaching deep into the well that birthed the genre, and pulling out inspiration from the sediment at the bottom rather than just a bucket of stagnant water off the top. The Gate and the Key is spectacularly claustrophobic and lo-fi while maintaining a strong sense of clarity. Both of the crud-caked rhythm guitars drive straight to your ears, while the double-bass, snares and cymbals carve out a cacophony against the sewer-scape, and the grumbling gutturals seem a direct channel for the ill intentions of the otherworldly, imaginary monstrosities this musician has championed...or at least I hope they are 'imaginary', because if not the future isn't looking so bright. All told, while I might have found individual tunes on the Dark Circles EP mildly more memorable than this material, there is much more of it here, and it's darker, denser...plumbing the depths of sewage and sanity while pounding humanity into a footnote. I kept thinking back to Gozer in the first Ghostbusters flick. 'The traveler has come!' Yes, it's already here, beneath your feet, seeping into the empty spaces of the Earth, making a meal of mankind.

Verdict: Win [8.5/10] (stench of words not uttered)

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The Wakedead Gathering - Dark Circles EP (2012)

Cincinnati crypt keeper The Wakedead Gathering (aka Andrew Lampe) left a reasonable impression upon me with his 2010 debut Tenements of Ephemera, which had him well on his way to becoming another A-lister of the throwback death metal scene here in the States, and to that end, its successor, the Dark Circles EP does not disappoint. There's nothing new or original happening here, perhaps, but what I appreciated with the debut, and again here, is how central the songwriting is despite the levels of atmosphere Lampe manifests through the backing melodic subtext. Where many projects are content to just drudge along in the footsteps of their influences with dime-a-dozen riffing patterns, there is not one misplaced or uninteresting sequence throughout these six tracks which withdrew me from the experience. Not once did I glance at the clock through a good number of spins...

I love how the very base, primitive guitar tone here is so chunky and clean, whether it's swaggering along in a more death/doom configuration or a surgical death/thrash pattern ("Dark Circles" itself). Then he'll add these subtle, glimmering, echoing phrases in the backdrop which add such depth, dimension and definition to the songs. You're never really just left with one boring, drawling progression of notes to attend you. Songs never exceed their grasp, and chugging, slower segments are interspersed with uptempo breaks that never disintegrate upon transition. Tremolo riffs are pure old school 1988-1993 but usually menacing and catchy as I enjoy them (Scream Bloody Gore, Malleus Maleficarum, etc). The vocals are nothing unusual, reminding me of a mix of old Swedish garbled grunters like Dan Swanö with Chris Reifert of Autopsy. Dark and steady. The bass here wasn't much of a factor in listening, but the drums were pretty well balanced with a live-ish feel to them that doesn't feel over tracked or over edited. In fact, overall I feel like The Wakedead Gathering could pull off a very close approximation of this sound in the live setting, a boon for fans who disdain the highly polished studio output of many more technical death acts.

When Lampe pulls off some fell, glorious, saddening phrase (like the descending melodies in "Inhale the Eclipse"), the music becomes truly captivating and atmospheric to the point that I wish so many more of these retro death metal stylists would pay heed. Dark Circles isn't merely brutality for brutality's sake: you get a feeling that this act is meant for more straight from the ritual intro to the EP. It's an actual feat of composition as opposed to arbitrary piggyback riding on the popularity of these old, morbid, flustered aesthetics. Granted, when I pull apart the pieces, it's not exactly unique. The Wakedead Gathering does not sound overtly like any one of its particular influences, but a celebration of dozens of them, and unafraid to embellish itself in more accessible ranges of melody despite the negative connotations this might provoke from neanderthals who covet the genre. In the end, I found Dark Circles even more captivating than its predecessor, and alongside other newer acts like Horrendous, Sonne Adam and Morbus Chron, Lampe is proving he's got so much more leg to stand upon than many of the tired rehashes in this niche.

Verdict: Win [8.5/10]

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