Album Review: Reekmind - Mired in the Reek of Grief
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
Some of us like our death metal slow, wreathed in the fumes of organic decomposition. Less the torrent surging above, more so the sludgy sediment of liquefied human remains blending into a sickly gruel below. Reekmind understand this; their take on death metal smacks more of the decaying trudge of the undead horde, slow but unstoppable. Imagine if Crowbar were a death metal band, and you may get somewhere close to understanding the mastery of the crawling riff on display here; consider “Cavernous Creeper” at 1:12 – that string slide as if hurled from some precipitous ledge to a gnarled canyon floor a mile below, the string bends, that pinch harmonic, the chugs and tremolo…such a multifaceted display of techniques within a single riff, and it isn’t alone either. The album veritably oozes with a stinking repertoire of riffs, we don’t even need to move beyond “Cavernous Creeper” for further evidence of it; the section that begins at around 6:33 and concludes the song is just loathsome, with two winding tremolo riffs going simultaneously and knotting in and out like guts snagging on spurs of bone. The sliding bass underneath is positively repulsive in the best way possible, and adds this vomit-inducing lurch everywhere it flashes it’s pustule-ridden charms.
Of all the chimeric genre hybrids out there, few merge quite so fluidly as Death and Doom metal. It’s a match made in heaven, or perhaps the converse. As good an exemplar that could be asked for is closer “A Lingering Mephitic Fog”. It’s probably my favourite of the bunch, a towering gore-slicked obelisk wrought with the mocking grins of a million piled skulls. Structure and texture warp like some hellish half-glimpsed void entity only partially perceptible to the mind of man, with melancholic acoustic sections only emphasising the denaturing force of the blastbeats at 6:54, snarling death metal surging to the front lines once more. By far the most tuneful song to choose from, “Lingering Mephitic Fog” proves a perfect capstone to the album and succeeds in making it’s 11 minutes feel half as long as they are.
But it’s not all sunshine and roses; while there are some fantastic riffs, there is also a marked reliance on palm muted chugging that renders some passages tawdry; the opening track for example leaves not the greatest impression, consisting as it does of chugging that just goes on and on with a grim obstinacy that had me shaken to the core. God knows, it’s not the most unknown of phenomena for death metal bands to display notable passion for the lower registers, let alone ones with so substantial a payload of doom metal in the DNA, but even so anyone who has ever knocked back more vodka than is wise will attest that you can have too much of a good thing. Additionally, while the production job isn’t bad, I’d take a filthier sound – guitars are fuzzy, the bass hunkers down like a troll, the vocals echo and drums thunder, but even so, it could do with a few palmfuls more of grit rubbed into the suppurating gouges along. It’s flanks. Something damper, slick beneath layers of accumulating corpse wax and pooling sewage water.
The totality of it is that “Mired in the Reek of Grief” moulders somewhere between “good” and “very good” while reeled back by a tractor beam of noticeable if broadly negligible faults. The introductory track could be shorn entirely with nothing of value lost, and the production- while adequate – could be grimmer, but it’s not as though these blemishes spoil the overall package. If you find that death metal is best slow, sludgy, and deeply unpalatable, turgid with sickly riffs that slither like fattened leeches, then cast an eye towards the festering pit of medical waste that is Reekmind .
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