Contaigeon - Death at the Gates of Delirium (2010)

I don't have a whole lot of moral qualms with posting downloadable albums on this blog, as evidenced by this rambling diatribe I posted a while back. Without falling too far down the rabbit hole, I think it's fair to say that the music industry is having to play catch-up FAST, and most independent bands are already far ahead of the curve, taking matters into their own hands by releasing digital versions of their albums via a myriad of different sites. Bandcamp is one of them, and is an easy way to find information on new bands, preview tracks, download entire albums, and buy merchandise directly from the artist. It's rad, and a good vehicle for younger bands who are more concerned with getting their name 'out there' than having 10,000 different shitty t-shirt designs for sale on their myspace page or whatever. And every once in a while, you'll come across a band producing some truly exceptional music, too.

UK's Contaigeon is one of those bands. Falling somewhere between the forward-thinking DM of Morbid Angel and the ominous scrawl of bands like Impetuous Ritual, Dead Congregation, and Vasaeleth, Death at the Gates of Delirium is a ghastly beast of a record. Scraggly rythms, deep snarling vocals, and creeping dirges snake through a corrupted labrynth of discord. Of course, it's one thing to simply infuse a claustrophobic sense of dread into the material, but swarming beneath the thick and murky atmosphere lies a very technically proficient unit, nodding at progressive DM bands like Mithras through the haze. Throw in some ambient 'deathscapes', a Lovecraftian lyrical slant that obsesses over otherworldly entities, and some good old fashioned blasting... and you have one of the better records of the year.

Why don't you convince your parents to send you to band camp for the summer, and maybe you could make something cool, too.

Tracklist:
1. The Following Darkness
2. Devoured By The Swarm
3. Those In The Soil
4. Misery
5. The Day The Earth Stood Dead
6. Slithering Sickness
7. Plague Lord
8. They Who Gnaw The Bones
9. Lifeeater
10. Curroption

The seeds of desolation