If there is one city in the United States that has most embraced the US Extreme Metal scene, it is Portland, Oregon. It is the home of the annual BLACK CIRCLE FESTIVAL, which brings many of the country's best underground acts together under one roof. On the Metal spectrum, Portland's native acts range from the Blackened, Punk-inflected Thrash of TOXIC HOLOCAUST, to the dark Folk Metal of AGALLOCH to the slow and transcendental Doom of YOB and the thick, gnarly Sludge of RED FANG. To put it lightly, this is not a city that you would associate with one single strain of Metal. SEPITERNAL DUSK identify as a Death Metal band, but this tag is somewhat misleading. Having formed in 2011 and releasing one demo in 2012, their self-titled debut album, released at the end of September, does not fit as clearly into the Death Metal scene as you would suspect, having absorbed the eclectic and varied styles that the city has within it.

For starters, the first track sounds closer to something that ELECTRIC WIZARD would do than what DEICIDE might. "Moon Beneath Hook Cross" is a slow, atonal dirge, complete with a fitting sound bite to introduce listeners to the record. The low-fi  atmosphere of the production only adds to how awesome the song is. The dark, termolo picked intro of "Streams of Night", which becomes, essentially, an old school Death Metal track, works really well, and sounds like it was taken straight out of the late 1980's rather than the mid 2010's. However, it's very slow Death Metal, very Doomy and, all in all, intended more to depress than disembowel. The song which marks the half way point of the album, "Upon the Gallows of Perihelion", is more of the same; not that I'm complaining. It's grim, sepulchral and fierce without having to pick up an insane amount of speed. The penultimate track, "Seclusion of the Bereaved", is, by the standards of the rest of the album, the fastest song on the record. It has plenty of riffs and hooks, powerful vocals and an aura of menace that hangs over the song like a thick funeral fog. The song which closes the album is the shortest song by over six minutes, and is centered around a slow, droning guitar riff that reminds me a little bit of MY DYING BRIDE; it has a thick tone, is somewhat melodic, and sounds really cool. If there is any way in which this band could improve, it's by adding more musical ideas into their songs. Admittedly, this is hard when most of your songs are over eight minutes long, but there are parts of this record where your attention begins to drift away from the music, because the same motifs and ideas are repeated quite a bit in any given song. In all other regards, this album is pretty cool.

This album incorporates all of the main elements that make Extreme Metal great- Dooms slow, thick riffs, Death Metals aggression and ferocity, all topped off with the aura and low-fi sensibilities of Black Metal. I would definitely recommend checking this album out, as it's very interesting, and stands apart from a lot of Extreme Metal which sticks to worn clichés.