As Friesland, Netherlands based death/doom project Grim Fate creep into their second year of existence their debut EP ‘Emerging From the Crypt’ signals a well intentioned coffin-birth of sorts into the claustrophobic world of death metal’s sluggish-yet-popular offshoot. If you heard their ‘Decomposition’ demo from 2017 and thought it sounded like a death metal guitarist frustrated with a metronome don’t worry, the band have added a second guitarist who also programmed the drums on this release. ‘Emerging From the Crypt’ offers sharper, far more focused Immolation, Demigod and Disma influenced death metal.

‘Emerging From The Crypt’ clearly aims for the most foul and doomed era of Finnish death metal and it’s now rusting demo era. Equal amounts ‘Onward to Golgotha’, demo era Demigod, and Abhorrence provide a sound not too far from modern incarnations of Finn-death influence such as Disma and Desecresy. If you’re already familiar with this style Grim Fate‘s sound is tuned a bit more towards the slower end of the spectrum though the guttural vocals aren’t exactly belched out (“Dying World” has a semi-belch) as much as they’re grunted forth. They haven’t written a riff that I’m deathly excited about but “Decomposition” and “Embracing Your Death” gave me enough hints of early Amorphis to pique my interest and see what their next (already in the works) release will entail.

Highly recommended for fans of old school Finnish death metal, old school death/doom metal, and any band I’ve mentioned so far. They’re still forming their sound but if I can sit through twenty minutes of death/doom band with programmed drums they’re definitely doing something right. In fact I didn’t even realize they were programmed until some of the splash/hi-hat work kicked in. I would suggest sampling “Intro/Decomposition” first if possible, it is a strong Krypts-like death/doom track that gives a clear idea of what Grim Fate sound like even if the tail end of the song isn’t well-formed. Otherwise the sample of the title track up on their bandcamp is just as good a representation.

NOTE: Bandcamp link below is for the digital version direct from the band. Check Chaos Records for the CD, and Dawnbreed Records for the Tape.

Doomed to remain. 3.25/5.0

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