Album Review: Devoured Elysium - Void Grave
Reviewed by Dan Phipps
Devoured Elysium formed in 2017, the Turkish 4 piece who already have one full length release to their name have taken no time to compose a follow up titled Void Grave. With the Mediterranean area being a steady and regular contributor of high quality outputs to the death metal scene there are high expectations for death metal acts coming from that area.
Devoured Elysium describe themselves as a slamming brutal death metal band but Void Grave does not fit that description in my opinion. The record has a very clean technical sound, now unlike a lot of bands who fall into this category who try to bring lots of flash but fill their records with a lot of what are essentially throw away riffs, Devoured Elysium have a very full tight writing style, at times it feels almost engineered with how the songs are composed and this structure really hits home and helps tracks such as 'Green Screen Failure' which is crammed of technical finesse riffing develop throughout so they do not come across as monotonous.
Now the band deviate at times away from the technical side and offer a display of more traditional slamming brutality during the album with tracks like 'Spinderer'. Void Grave includes a guest feature from Kirill Zarubin of international slamming giants Traumatomy on the track Slam Panzer, the slam sounds do bleed into the more technical tracks which gives the listener a different area to focus on which works very well. If I had to find a negative about Void Grave it would be how abruptly the record finishes, I feel that with how well the tracks are composed, having its final track 'Chrono Shift' just finishing to be a slight let down and would have much preferred a bit more to end the album, but in all honesty that is such a minor issue and does not ruin how enjoyable a listen the record is.
Void Grave is being released via US label Gorehouse Productions who 2 weeks into January already have had a stellar release from Party Cannon, now have a second courtesy of Devoured Elysium. It’s a clean and well crafted set of songs which showcases a fantastic blend of technicality and brute force and will keep you coming back for more.
