ENCOFFINATION - III: Hear Me, O' Death (Sing Thou Wretched Choirs) [CD]

Following three years of putrid silence since the previous LP from American death/doom metal duo, ENCOFFINATION, delivered their most deadly works yet in 2014, with the release of III - Hear Me, O' Death (Sing Thou Wretched Choirs), once again through Poland’s Selfmadegod Records. An album that takes ENCOFFINATION’s tar-encrusted tones, slow-motion seismic rhythms and soulless, guttural conjuring to their most claustrophobic levels to date, the follow-up to their 2011-released O' Hell, Shine in Thy Whited Sepulchres LP shows the duo taking their rotted deathcrush into more occult territory, and implementing some of the most ghoulish, slug-paced funeral death to ever be recorded. Constructed over a full year, the album was recorded in various sessions throughout 2013, the drums recorded at Universal Sound in San Diego, California, and the rest at Graf Yairden in Atlanta, funeral vocal choirs, organs and other elements influence the flow of the album, making this one of the most harrowing releases of the year, no only one of the most slowly destructive. Formed in 2008 by drummer Elektrokutioner (Black Pentagram Cult, Father Befouled, Festered, Scaremaker, etc.) and guitarist/bassist/vocalist Ghoat (Father Befouled, Festered, Vomitchapel, ex-Hills of Sefiroth, etc.), ENCOFFINATION perpetuates a suffocating style of slow-motion, dirge-infused death metal with funeral doom bleakness. Their 2010-debut EP, Temples Descend Below the Earth, instantly attained the attention of the underground, but it was their devastating Ritual Ascension Beyond Flesh LP that inundated the scene like a plague, the album initially released later that year through a limited cassette run, which caught the attention of Selfmadegod Records, who issued the album on CD and eventually LP. A pair of EPs and a split with Grave Upheaval bridged Ritual Ascension... and the follow up LP, O' Hell, Shine in Thy Whited Sepulchres, released in 2011 through Selfmadegod. In 2012, Debumur-Morti released the five-song Elegant Funerals for the Unknown Dead EP, after which the creators began constructing their latest monstrosity, III - Hear Me, O' Death. (Sing Thou Wretched Choirs). [Selfmadegod]