Artist: Abysmal Decay
Country: United Kingdom
Label: Self-Released
Formats: Demo tape
Year: 2025
‘Abysmal Decay’ is the first feat for these four lads from Glasgow, Scotland. But although this is a short 2-track debut demo, these guys certainly are no rookies in the realm of Extreme Metal. All of them are or were part of a rather large amount of underground bands of which I personally also only actually heard the great but now defunct Vuil. At first glance most of their other or previous activities can be filed under Grindcore and Black/Thrash Metal, Abysmal Decay, however, is a full-blown (Swedish) Death Metal affair.
Although ‘Abysmal Decay’ offers only two tracks and a playing time of just 10 minutes, it is quite a convincing piece of old style Death Metal. I deliberately do not use the term “Old School”, because it might sound slightly regressive, it has a strong and heavy-as-F production and has much in common with the more modern sort of Swedish Death Metal bands. Riff-heavy and predominantly slow, Abysmal Decay can be positioned amongst bands like Revel In Flesh, Puteraeon, Sorcery, Fleshcrawl and the likes.
While Puteraeon and current Sorcery is actually Swedish, Abysmal Decay has most in common with the German brand of Swedish Death Metal. Based on deep grooves, a crunchy sound, eerie melodies (especially in the second track), pummelling rhythms and deep grunts Abysmal Decay feels just a bit too far removed from the classic Swedish bands of Grave, Entombed or Unleashed for an apt comparison. And, frankly, these Scotsmen are definitely more interesting than anything that Rogga Johansson produces with his countless of redundant bands.
Usually a part of the success of these short feel-good demos has to do with the brief playing time. It is rather easy to keep things interesting in only two tracks and this sort of music tends to wane in larger portions, so it remains to be seen what these four guys can do on a next release. But, for now, this self-titled debut demo tape is a very enjoyably piece of solid Death Metal.
