Death Metal can often give you the creeps - but in a good way, I suppose...like a horror film on Friday the 13th. Of course standing hairs and crawling skin will most likely be the reaction of genre newcomers - or complete outsiders - but nonetheless I believe that it is fair to say that those who unfamiliar with the style may raise a few perturbed eyebrows.

Veterans of Metal however...are not phased by anything at this point. Those of us that have been doing this for a while have become desensitised to the grave-digging approach of Death Metallers. That is why it is always exciting when you can still discover something that can make Edgar Allan Poe crawl into fetal position and weep - before jumping up and tearing down the house of usher. And on "Endless Pilgrimage" British Death Metal outfit GRAVE MIASMA are raising the spirits of darkened souls and making the pits sway to the rhythm of their deadly pendulum.

I am far from an expert in this genre...but I can always sense where credit is due. "Endless Pilgrimage" certainly bares all the overly familiar traits of the style, and yet it stands out of the darkly attired crowd due to it sheer quality.

Allow me to clarify that when speaking of quality, I am even referring to the record's production values. Yes, it still bares the recording traits of any self-respecting Death Metal instalment, and yet it sounds thoroughly heavy and at time even sufficiently clear.

And 'heavy' is indeed the world. The drums bombard the ground like manic fists of those buried alive and the guitars scream out demented riffs like echoes from an insane asylum on the hill - and both accompany the monstrous growling that is coming from within the crypt. "Utterance of the Foulest Spirit" and "Purgative Circumvolution" and "Full Moon Dawn" spew wretched brutality and sludgy grooves whilst tracks like "Yama Transforms to Afterlife" and "Glorification of the Impure" (which features a re-recorded passage from a 20002 demo track of the same name) just scorch the atmosphere with exploding geysers of venom.

In short, fans of the genre would surely stock this on the shelves of their mausoleums. "Endless Pilgrimage" (though only an EP) is one of those records that can raise a genre from the beneath the ground.