Abaddon Incarnate – The Wretched Sermon
Release Date: 5th August 2022
Label: Transcending Obscurity Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Deathgrind, Grindcore, Death Metal.
FFO: Napalm Death, Wormrot, Nasum, Misery Index.
Review By: Rick Farley
Irish grindcore/death metal legends Abaddon Incarnate, now more than twenty-five years into their career, are set to release a brutal grinding slab of disgusting death metal, intent on smashing your fucking skull in. The Wretched Sermon releasing on Transcending Obscurity Records marks the bands sixth full-length gut-churning album. It’s been eight long years since 2014’s DarkCrusade, and you can clearly hear how the time off has energized the band to refine and refocus their blood lusting extreme metal assault.
Musically, The wretched Sermon is just a menacing beast of infernal edged guitar sawing, fast drum battering and incredibly imposing gutturals. Dirty and grimy guitar tones, dense bass and punchy attacking drums, sound like a hellish soundscape. This is uncomfortable to listen to, in the best way. It sounds like removing someone’s flesh and jackhammering their fucking bones. Don’t be fooled, though, there is some serious musicianship and well written songs on display here. Not content with just steamrolling everything in sight, the bands has injected some bits of atmosphere, lightly distorted guitar picked outro’s, ethereal droning melodies, unique eerie solos, a faint piano, and random noises that add dynamics within the songs and keeps the album interesting without listener fatigue that’s typical of this genre. Better structured songs and sonic diversity make Abaddon Incarnate’s aggressive and heavy as fuck riffs hit ten times harder. The band fused old school Swedish death metal, dirty buzzsaw guitars and jagged riffs with grindcore elements straight from the UK in the late eighties complete with low guttural backing vocals into a modern rawness that is heinously brutal. Throw in some thrashiness and a little black metal aggression with fucking intense hookiness and extreme vocals; and you got a contender for best deathgrind album releasing this year.
Rising of the Lights is the perfect example of the band’s sound, intense chaos filled drums, vicious raspy screams, thick bellows and hellish grindy fast guitar riffs ready to strike. A heavy groove with an eerie melody takes the song close to the end, then careens towards a disarray of relentless musical belligerence. Into the Maelstrom is two minutes of black metal inspired tremolo picked violence, gloomy bass lines snaking its way along underneath and blasting straight to the darkest depths of hell. Shrine of Flesh is stomping swede death guitars, old school Carcass like backing gutturals and hefty groovy riffs that’s built for the pit. Isolation and Decay is the albums longest track at seven minutes. While most of the songs are just reaching two minutes, this song proves the band can fully flesh out much more than those short bursts. It starts with a slithery bass line, string picked guitars and groove-based drums. The track explodes into a noise filled crust punk guitar riff for the verses before ultra-fast picking launches the song into a merciless at full tilt annihilation. The song is a wretched monster, just crushing and pummelling everything in sight with little time for you to even take a full breath. The song takes a turn to a slower to mid-tempo sludgy doom chord progression that rings out a giant wall of guitars, while vengeful melody plays overtop. A discordant solo and noisy feedback brings an end to this brutal track. An absolute highlight from an exceptionally good album. Well done.
The wretched Sermon proves to be a stellar fucking piece of abrasive grinding goodness that I will be coming back to for a very long time. 
(4 / 5)
