It takes a certain measure of confidence to make up a word and use that for a band name. It's another measure entirely to firmly plant your band's flag in a genre, then defy the sensibilities of that genre. Surely it has happened in the past, but in this day and age, who would have their band be so affirmatively Death Metal and yet have each song take for-freakin'-ever to finish? Who has that sort of gall, that sort of bare-faced cheek, to take music whose songs average under three minutes and nearly triple it?

From the storied city of Portland, Oregon, where order and chaos have clashed for generations, comes the convention-defiant DECREPISY, and you the listener will indeed find such bravado on their debut album, "Emetic Communion", wherein for thirty-five minutes, the usual methods are inverted. Rather than a dozen songs at a few minutes apiece, this album comes in with five tracks, four of which range from six to ten minutes; pretty wacky for Death Metal, eh?

Well, the band leaves no uncertainty right from the opener, "Dissipating Form", which begins with a heavy and satisfying cadence before the growling vocalist enters and completes the team. By the time the listener realizes almost eight minutes have gone by, here comes the title track, "Emetic Communion", lumbering along with the same sort of satisfying lilt but a bit accelerated, then the speed really picks up towards the end before trailing off in that direction.

The same sort of promise is delivered on "Embodied Decomposition", which finally sets an average bar for the band. The album's superheavyweight follows that in the form of "Abattoir Of Sorrow", a ten-and-a-half minute torture chamber which retains the earlier consistency but lets in just the lightest flavor of Doom, particularly to start it off. That song's own outro could have done this album justice, but bookending the album is "Anxiety Womb", a two-minute instrumental which is not the signature it should be in this spot; it seems more like the segue into the album's second half, but there is no second half.

And that's 'first impressions' for you. For only having four real songs and taking over half an hour to finish, this album is not much meat on a rather sizable bone. The discerning Death Metal enthusiast will be able to find the marrow, at least, and there is plenty of that. Frequent tempo changes, for one thing, work well to keep the listener engaged.

For all it's strangeness and faults, "Emetic Communion" still hangs up as a decently strong debut, a curiosity for the genre as it too enters our strange and faulty future. Your spell-checker won't like DECREPISY one bit, but if you ever wanted MORBID ANGEL's archetype Death sound to slightly blend in some crunchy Doom a la HIGH ON FIRE, then you really ought to pick this one up.