CoC : Acephalix - Deathless Master : Review

Acephalix - _Deathless Master_
(Southern Lord, 2012)
by: Dan Lake (9 out of 10)

Southern Lord promo materials suggest that Acephalix hail from San Francisco, CA. I've been there, though, so I know you can get to Frisco by airplane. I've driven the surrounding countryside, so I know you can leave and return to the city by major highways. Not once did I have to forcibly smash the rotted door of an overgrown mausoleum, dig downward continuously through a single night that somehow extended well beyond 24 hours, through earth seething with pale eyeless worms as thick as you forearm, finally breaking through to some Lovecraftian hall of subterranean horrors packed around a ceremonial altar gushing ichors both organic and ethereal, while overseeing the whole obscene episode is a ghastly, slithering form whose mere existence defies comprehension by the human eye. And since that's where Acephalix must truly reside, Southern Lord is clearly full of shit.

In a pithy, terrifying half-hour, Acephalix ram the very epitome of crusty death metal through your soft, collapsing skull. Take the above description of the band's sonic hometown as a fair representation of the music. Humanity is doomed, as anyone can know simply by peering past the flimsy gauze of civilization and socially indoctrinated reality into the demon-swarming abyss closing around us. The creature calling itself Kyle House rends the mortal veil with churning riffs and gore-caked solos, supported unerringly by the manifestations David Benson (drums) and Luca Indrio (bass), while Daniel Butler channels metaphysical revulsion through his mortified throat.

_Deathless Master_ is the best death metal I've heard this year. Let it reign in your blood.

Contact: http://www.acephalix.com/

(article published 1/7/2012)