Finland’s Proscription lay down a mighty ambitious sound on their debut, the band landing on established and reputable extreme peddlers Dark Descent for good reason: this is 43 minutes of dense, dark, death metal, Proscription wandering through the sewers but with a bit of a light leading the way in the form of some glorious death/doom guitar work, the sound oppressive but the results freeing. 

Check out “Red Sacrament Black Communion” to try to make sense of it all, this swirling and jarring 4:17 being a truly fantastic microcosm of what this band is capable of. Proscription grinds while laying down atmospheric death metal riffs; they play doom and sludge parts that journey into the caves without sounding at all like a cavernous DM band; they evoke atmosphere without being lame. Truly, Proscription has a fantastic thing going on here, the songs on this album threatening to morph together into one huge ball of muck by about halfway point, but the band spitting the listener out at record’s end satisfied, disgusted, intrigued. And, importantly, by the final duo of songs, the grinding and atmospheric “To Reveal The Words Without Words” and the frantic finishing title track, the band has actually proved they have enough variety here to keep the songs unique. Excellent debut here from a band most certainly worth checking out; whatever they come up with next time around is going to be massive.