Artist: Abysmal Grief
Country: Italy
Label: Avantgarde Music
Formats: LP
Year: 2023
To celebrate the joyous fact that one of the most obscure Doom Metal bands has found a home with the celebrated quality label Avantgarde Music and as an advance sweetener in anticipation of a new full-length album, the label is releasing a compilation with ‘Despise The Living, Desecrate The Dead’, featuring previously unreleased songs from the last few years. Anyone with a soft spot for enigmatic and cryptic metal must have stumbled upon Abysmal Grief at least once. A band that simultaneously sounds supremely unique, but also manages to capture the long and deep-rooted Italian tradition in embracing the occult and the obscure in overall compelling, orchestral, organ-heavy doom.
This compilation, with a playing time of just under three quarters of an hour, features songs that, for one reason or another, never made it onto mainstream releases. Here, we are presented with them in a chronological order, starting with the 2021 recording and going back to 2016. Because the songs were written and recorded at different points in history, they do of course lack that mesmerising cohesiveness of the average Abysmal Grief album, but in return you get an interesting insight and overview of what the band has done over the past few years. The different musical identities of the songs make it a musical jumble that should also be consumed as such. To pick some out fairly randomly, the opening track ‘White Coffins’ perhaps still carries the most of the “real” Abysmal Grief DNA, ‘Missa Est’ has a nice rocking and bluesy undertone but we are also presented with very heavy fare in the form of some instrumentals in which the organ is made even more much the focal point.
But no matter which track you listen to and whatever your personal preference, if this compilation makes anything at all clear, it is that the immensely slow and all-consuming pace, the conjuring vocals and the soul anesthetizing organs make Abysmal Grief what it is: a complete, unparalleled band, a truly unique entity.
So, for those who, despite the band’s rather impressive back catalogue, can’t get enough of Abysmal Grief, ‘Despise The Living, Desecrate The Dead’ is an excellent addition to the collection and hopefully something that can keep them busy while in eager anticipation of what’s to come…
