Band:	Corpsessed
Album:	Abysmal Thresholds
Style:	Death metal
Release date:	February 04, 2014
Guest review by:	LascaillesShroud

01. Invocation
02. Of Desolation
03. Trepanation
04. Sovereign
05. Necrosophic Channeling
06. Ravening Tides
07. Apotheosis
08. Demoniacal Subjugation
09. Transcend Beyond Human
10. The Threshold

Deep in the damp and dark cavernous depths of the Earth, a primal growl turns mountains to dust.

Abysmal Thresholds is everything it looks like based on the cover; dark, filthy and unashamedly bleak death metal that spews forth a vile stream of musical vomit in the form of dense guitars, ambient drums, and deeply resonant vocals. This is an album to be treated differently from its peers, if only for the unique production and sonic setting. The guitars and bass are forefront, with the drums sitting slightly back and the vocals reverberating everywhere. You will not a find a song that doesn't seek to pound you into bleak nothingness.

Straddling the funeral and doom sides of its lesser influences at times, the lyrics across Abysmal Thresholds definitely have the oppressive, bleak and melancholic touch of the aforementioned genres - while executing them in a much more direct manner. Long, drawn out growls collide with the back and forth exchange of the drums and guitars to just really press on you, crushing you down until your body is reduced to mere atoms.

After a small (and polarizing) intro, the album rarely lets up and if it does, it is brief at best. Most of the songs either proceed - not slowly - but with no apparently haste, or they advance with a slightly uptempo feel; just a bit more driving than some of the other songs. After many listens I feel like this album is a good sonic equivalent for the onset of a heart attack. Brief moments where the chaos and panic settle down, but that fear never gives up its grip fully. Blast-beats aren't annoyingly loud like a lot of death metal can be and the fast double-kicks aren't smacking your ear drums either and sit perfectly. The guitars are not clean but rather heavy palm mutes ooze with excess noise and grime, and I love that. It sounds like death metal from the early 90's with just a splash of modern touches.

The album beautifully functions as great background music, or as something to just immerse yourself in. The one downside being, that its thick and overly dense production that gives the album so many of its alluring and perverse qualities, can also be tiring. I've listened to the album all the way through three times in one sitting at most, and I always feel like a break is needed. However, it never lasts long and usually the next day I am ready to be destroyed by it again, with eagerness.