This debut album from Dublin dark metallers Zom – they’ve previously released a demo and a 7″ single, both to great acclaim in this particular corner of planet mosh – is dark and murky as you can imagine the deepest parts of the foulest sections of the River Liffey to be without actually getting your favourite DMs wet…
Emitting an unambiguous and unmiskakeable foul stench right from the off, ‘Flesh Assimilation’ – which is released today (Monday November 24) via Ireland’s own Invictus Productions – displays a putrid power which is as darkly entrancing as it is revulsive. Drawing very much from the traditional Norwegian school of black-meets-death metal, while skirting the sludgier edge of doomy monstrosity, the eight tracks display a raw anger and aggression which translates well, aided by a very clever production mix, which combines the right degree of old-school muddiness with modern digital precision to draw together the various dank elements into a listening experience which is simultaneously hellishly hypnotic and cosmos-imploding in its heaviness.
Forget your leprechauns: the island of Ireland currently is producing some of the blackest, darkest, heaviest, most primeval (I’ll resist the temptation to throw the adjective ‘primordial’ in here) extreme metal around at the moment… with this intense and acerbic debut, Zom definitely, and defiantly, have thrown their lot in with the likes of Aeternum Valeas among the leading proponents of this new breed of challenging Irish extremists.
Tracklist: Gates To Beyond
Tombs Of The Void / Hordes From The Cursed Realms / Gates To Beyond / Conquest / Illbeings Unspeak / Dead Worlds / The Depths / Flesh Assimilation
Recommended listening: