GOLGOTHAN REMAINS – Bearer of Light, Matriarch of Death

vote
7.5

• Bands:
  GOLGOTHAN REMAINS
• Duration: 11/22/2024
• Available from: 00:21:02
• Label:

• Dark Descent

Streaming not yet available

The underground echo of “Adorned in Ruin”, Golgothan Remains' second full-length released a couple of years ago by Sentient Ruin, has not gone unnoticed. Among the best companies to emerge from the bubbling Australian cauldron in the last decade, our band are in fact back on the market, being able to count on the support of a label like Dark Descent, a real bulwark that we are sure will allow their music and their name to circulate with even greater insistence in the death metal circles 'that matter', giving the right emphasis to what is now an authoritative and winning proposal.
This time, the format chosen by the Sydney band is that of a full-bodied EP of four songs lasting over twenty minutes, which allows us to savor the formula again through a distillation never so dense with traditional ideas (Immolation) and arias coming instead from contemporary strand of the genre, for a final result that definitively places emphasis on the atmospheric sensitivity of the quartet and on the narrative angle of its writing.
Obviously, it is impossible not to bother Ulcerate to describe this dark descent into the psyche, especially the more recent ones inclined to flirt with the concepts of harmony and melody, whose influence – here expressed in the form of majestic riffs, oblique digressions and arpeggios with a meditative flavor – it overlaps with a rhythmic gait that always expresses control and power.
In short, the more decisive and aggressive rattles of the previous recording chapter do not find much space in this “Bearer of Light, Matriarch of Death”, a work which – as mentioned – is revealed in layers of decadence following the evolution of a hypnotic and imaginative songwriting, in which even the doom component necessarily ends up being highlighted.
Each track therefore seems to rise like a tide from a dark ocean, with crescendos as imperceptible as they are inexorable that come to submerge the listener and take him into an 'other' dimension, making enjoyment less impactful but also more long-lasting.
There are many details to grasp, the interpretation is always very intense (just listen to Matthieu Van den Brande's performance on the microphone, between growl, scream and spoken word) and from “Methuselah” to “Andromeda” (the tracklist opens and ends on the same riff) the return of Golgothan Remains can easily be ascribed to the death metal highlights of this last part of 2024.
'Just' an EP, but the substance deserves all the attention and praise it deserves.