When life gives you lemons, sometimes you've got to compartmentalise every ounce of your being to the deadliest noise, and sacrifice your last breath to the most extreme on the Metal spectrum. Let me introduce you to IVORY PRIMARCH. The Australian collective have released their debut album, "As All Life Burns", a crushingly intense follow-up to their haunting EP, "Rituals of Excess". Gnarly and insidious, pounding yet suffocating, the album provides little sanctuary for a broken soul, intent on harbouring as much distortion and disdain as possible within its all-consuming blend of Funereal Doom, Psych and Sludge.

The entire album skulks for just under an hour, with the fierce trudge of "The Masque" erupting after a simple, profound narrative, shrouding you in a thick and heavy fog of distortion and malevolent vocals, bringing an unfaltering Doom appeal that entirely consumes. Morphing to "Gleancrawler" - which is a somewhat more melodic offering - the slow pounding is still relentless, but within a more Psych aspect that provides a momentary cooldown.

IVORY PRIMARCH serve up quite the collection of nuances in "As All Life Burns", with the title-track morphing to a slightly more melodeath vibe in the intro, retaining an overall Doom aspect for the majority of the cut. I'll be honest and say that the first seven minutes of the track felt a little mundane and monotonous, the riffs a little too repetitive and the structure quite bland, picking up only when the variation in the drumbeats pierced with something far more frantic. Sure, it's haunting, but the instrumental build-up just doesn't quite hit the spot in the way that it should create the atmospheric potential. "Keeper of Secrets" felt reminiscent of the former, mimicking the same formula and not achieving what it should in an unnecessarily prolonged track.

IVORY PRIMARCH are extreme, with a capital "E". The final section of the album takes it up several notches and kicks the living daylights out of the concept of noise. "Aetherbeast" is all trudged tempo once more, again, with little variation, with "Aftermath" concluding on literal noise and feedback. This is an album for a fan of sonic suffocation; there's no time to catch your breath, and frankly, the album is what I'd affectionately - and less eloquently - call a "mindfuck". If musical malaise is your jam, you'll be all over this like bluebottles to a turd. For me, it's too far off the sonic spectrum for my taste and the slow pounding is far too intense for my liking.