REVIEW: Decrepitaph - Profane Doctrines Unburied [2011]

N.B. This is a guest post from HeySharpshooter.

Sometimes, doing it right is better than doing it different or flashy. Death metal as a genre is going through several changes, with a major focus on bands doing everything they can not to sound like Death, Morbid Angel or Cannibal Corpse. They have embraced tri-tones, dissonance, bebop jazz and lyrics about Jungian psychology over buzz saw riffs, thrash beats and demons from hell mutilating and raping women. Not that there is anything wrong with trying to be different or technical: in fact, it’s a movement that has done nothing but help make death metal more mature and improve the academic arguments for the genre to be taken seriously as an artform.

But in the end, long time death metal fans crave good old skull bashing evil, and Decrepitaph’s new album, Profane Doctrines Unburied, provides just that. Decrepitaph have been churning out old-school, Autopsy-meets-Morbid Angel death/doom since 2006 at a record pace, with three full length albums, two EP’s and multiple splits already under their belt. The brutal 2-piece have drawn massive praise from the death metal community for their old school sound and attitude.

Profane Doctrines Unburied is the bands finest album to date. Loaded with tons of doom-y, brutal riffs, bowel rumbling bass and punching drums, it’s an album that could have come out fifteen years ago and not felt out of place. Songs like “Convulse in Eternal Agony", “A Suffocating Evil”, and “Horror Prevails” exemplify this old school brutality to a T. Everything about this record is old-school: the cover-art, the lyrics, the song titles. It feels like going back in a time machine to 1989, and that’s what makes this album feel so special. Don’t mistake this album, or this band for that matter, as merely old-school worship: Decrepitaph have add a level of energy and professionalism to their sound to separate them from the dozen’s of copy-cat death metal bands that dominate the barrel-bottom of the scene.

For death metal fans, Profane Doctrines Unburied is a mix of freshness and comfort that is likely to dominate their listening cycle. Many death metal fans have embraced the avant-garde, technical and genre-mashing of today as the necessary steps toward the evolution of the sound, as well as the steps needed for the genre to be taken seriously. But they will always offer up a virgin sacrifice to Satan for a band like Decrepitaph and an album like this.

Grade: 9/10



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