Review: Dusk Chapel – Astrophysics And Abnormal Activities

Style: Death metal, Progressive Metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Death, Cynic, Obscura
Review by: Francesco
Country: Ukraine
Release date: 22 July, 2022

Already three albums in, Dusk Chapel once more draws from the esoteric progressive metal world on this newest album to bring a unique vitality into their brand of punishing death metal, a stitching of influence from track to track with the result of having created a veritable Frankenstein’s monster. A unified force, Astrophysics And Abnormal Activities surges with energy barely contained in the complex fretwork, clockwork drumming, and harrowing vocals.

The album begins with an atmosphere building haunting piano and synth passage to open the first track “Parallel Lives”, a great representation of the whole album as it contains much of the progressive style the band will come to be known for throughout this release. Dusk Chapel incorporates synth, start-stop off-beat riffing, and haunting dissonant legato chords to build and build on pieces with laser focus. However, owing to the nature of the death metal genre, the pieces eschew an overabundance of prog metal convolution in favour of an aggressive ferocity and frenetic pacing that hearkens Death more than Opeth especially in regards to the vocalist Demether. There is no clean singing to be found on this album, and his mixed high screaming and low growl vocal style imbues the track listing with a certain visceral malevolence and extreme urgency.

Guitar player (and primary songwriter) Artyom weaves into his riffs a fluidity that carries each movement to the end without ever feeling disjointed; the riffs never sound out of place and facilitate the mood changes expertly. This is best exemplified in passages like the opening of the track “Noosphere”, where the song’s uptempo intro features tremolo picked riffing that gives way to a half-time melodic arpeggiated verse in a single beat, before shifting gear right back into the pre-established velocity and intensity of the piece. And that’s not to speak of his lead work, which contains harmonised melodies that would make any Gothenburg-area band blush. In truth there is more than a little melodic death metal influence in his work, as can be heard in the riffing on tracks like “Martyrs of Evolution” and “Hypergiant”.

The standout moment on this album for me comes about halfway through with one track called “Pleiades”, a beautifully played classical guitar piece that evokes a melancholy summer evening on a Mediterranean coast. It can be a staple of progressive death metal bands to include clean, ethereal, melodic atmospheric passages in the middle of intense tracks, and I was glad that Dusk Chapel skillfully avoided this pitfall by giving it a space of its own to flourish and alleviate the tension. In particular this provided a welcome stillness and calm in an album that, for all its merits, is still a death metal album.

To my surprise, the drumming was programmed by keyboardist Sergey, and I thought that even if it rarely endeavoured to stray outside of established genre boundaries, it was never boring. In fact, I’d venture to say Sergey’s keyboard work and drum programming was instrumental in the success of all the various moods and changes of expression on this release, keeping time and changing the feel halfway through measures while the riffs marched along. For me the only low point of this album was the bass playing, of which I can say little and less; guitarist Ayrtom doubles responsibility here and even the times when it’s audible I didn’t feel added much to the songs. It seems nitpicky, but with an album of this quality I felt I had to reach for criticism.

Nevertheless, I find that with Astrophysics And Abnormal Activities, Dusk Chapel carves their name into the thickest stone. If these guys had any English-language internet presence to speak of I’d look forward to following the rest of their career with great interest. In the interim I’ll keep my ear to the ground and hope they solidify the lineup with a dedicated rhythm section who might be able to help them take their music further, perhaps even onstage. Their take on the genre may not be a wholly original approach but never did it strike me as utterly derivative. The production is tight and definitely a notch above the previous albums. The songs flow well between one another, the arrangements play expertly with tension and release, the band builds on pieces where movements end and reprise seamlessly, and their experimentation with electronic soundscapes was a distinctive touch that I really enjoyed. A powerful release, this may be their biggest and best work yet: technical, precise, purposeful, and wasting not a single note.

Recommended tracks: Parallel Lives, Hypergiant, Secret Face
You may also like: Coexistence, Quo Vadis, Anciients
Final verdict: 9/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Metal-Archives page

Label: Soundage Productions | Website | Facebook

Dusk Chapel is:
– Artyom Yemelianenko (guitars, songwriting)
– Sergey “Chaos” Pestov (keyboards, programming)
– Demether Grail (vocals)