Review by Vladimir on January 26, 2024.

South America was always rich with lots of extreme metal bands, both within the black and death metal branches, although I feel as if they had a more successful run with death metal bands in recent years. Case and point is the Chilean death metal band Deconsekrated, which released their debut full-length album Ascension In The Altar Of Condemned on January 1st, 2024 via Iron, Blood And Death Corporation. If you like death metal with an ominous and unholy feel to it, then you should probably stick with me on this journey towards the forbidden ones.

Deconsekrated provides quite a morbid, dark and brooding death metal with the standard genre output in terms of the band's overall performance. Their music consists of aggressive downtuned guitars with tremolo riffing, blast beats and double-bass drumming, and intimidating growling vocals, along with some slower sections that create a very dramatic vibe while displaying an ominous sense of omnipresent evil that lurks in the shadows. The best examples that show the darker and frightening side of their songwriting are 'Spectral Rites' and especially 'Litany Of The Blasphemous' with the Lovecraftian chanting in the first three minutes of the song, before kicking in with death metal massacre. From one song to another, it feels like one horror story told through chapters, which ends as if your journey through the dark ended as if you were swallowed by an endless void.

This album has fairly simple and standard death metal songwriting, with every song following the similar pattern while progressing to the next one. It's hard to actually highlight just one or two songs because all of them are very effective when displaying both brutality and intimidation, two ingredients necessary for creating just the kind of death metal that will raise all hell. The great thing is that there is stylistic consistency from one song to another, which makes this album easy to follow along and enjoy without being lost midway through. Judging by the lineup that is listed on the Metal Archives page for this album, it seems that they also had a guest appearance of the acclaimed session drummer Krzysztof Klingbein, who has been a go-to guy for many bands that made good use of his drumming skills. If there is anything else I feel should be addressed that compliments the album's overall atmosphere, is the cover art by Rodrigo Pereira Salvatierra, who transferred that Lovecraftian macabre vibe to it which perfectly matches the band's output. The album has a very brutal and sharp sound production that is on par with later albums from veteran bands such as Incantation or similar.

I personally found this album to be a very nice thrill ride that provides just the kind of death metal which suits my taste. It's got everything you can expect from a death metal album, but in terms of its dark and brooding atmosphere, this is where it certainly won me over. Should you come across this album and feel tempted to give it a listen, I can guarantee that you won't regret it.

Rating: 8.3 out of 10

Review by criscool623 on January 11, 2022.

The next review is written by a guy who has absolutely little knowledge of what black metal is. Of course, I have my favorite albums but, other than Burzum's metal discography, they can be counted with one of my hands. Also, sadly, I'll have to resort to comparison, something that I HATE to do, but this time I have not much options so... here goes nothing!

Cosmogony Of Yggdrasil is an album that I listened to several times so i can talk about it, and not because I couldn't talk about it properly since the first time, but because I really enjoyed most of the music presented here. Most of the songs are fast, unstoppable and have an aura of chaos and evilness, proper of this music genre. Not only that, but also, they have their own structure that, little by little, hooks the listener owing to much of their sections, and that talks a lot about how rich this album is in terms of composition. The voice is grim and complements the music pretty well. In addition, I liked a lot the addition of guitar solos (which, nay, serve as licks and arrangements) in the middle of the songs, as each one of them has its particular lick that makes them memorable by themselves. Although the album in itself is pretty enjoyable and effective as a whole (in its majority, I have to emphasize once again), many of these songs are perfect to be added to your black metal playlist individually due to their individual merits and virtues (the solos, riffs, atmosphere or song progression).

Everything OK up to there. HOWEVER, I have come across some problems with this album that impeded me to give it a higher rate.

As I mentioned before, most of the music is intense and fast, but there are some other occasions in which the album takes a more mid-paced approach that ruins the experience due to the contrast with the rest of the album. The track 'Raunen' is the perfect example of this. It is the worst song of the album in my opinion due that it is longer that most of the good tracks that the album has, and it has a strange rhythm that, according to me, tries to be progressive, but that simply fails in being interesting. It really feels tedious and every time I listened to the album afterwards, I skipped that song due to how irrelevant it is for the rest of the oeuvre. Something similar happens with the last songs of the album. Half of 'Nobody Needs This World' and 'Yggdrasil' are not totally bad. Ok, they are actually not bad tracks, but the aggressiveness drop is notorious, and it has to be mentioned. It feels like a tepid ending for an album that started such in a grandiloquent way.

To conclude, I think that the band still lacks some personality to be something really outstanding. The band's voice and musical style kind of reminded me of what a band like Immortal could do (but with solos in the middle of the songs). This commentary may be seen as harsh since this is the band's very first release and I'm complaining about actually nothing, but it's something I wanted to mention in order for the band to take it into account when writing new stuff in a future. Despite this, I'm pretty sure that they can improve with the pace of time and may write more authentic music and with more identity.

In summary, Cosmogony Of Yggdrasil has outstanding songs within its repertoire and, as a whole, might be pretty attractive for black metal fans. It is NOT a masterpiece, and, for me, the band still has to look for their own personality. It is a good beginning, though, a worthy debut indeed. Recommended for those who seek a more melodic black metal, but with that darkness that characterizes this genre.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Review by criscool623 on January 11, 2022.

The next review is written by a guy who has absolutely little knowledge of what black metal is. Of course, I have my favorite albums but, other than Burzum's metal discography, they can be counted with one of my hands. Also, sadly, I'll have to resort to comparison, something that I HATE to do, but this time I have not much options so... here goes nothing!

Cosmogony Of Yggdrasil is an album that I listened to several times so i can talk about it, and not because I couldn't talk about it properly since the first time, but because I really enjoyed most of the music presented here. Most of the songs are fast, unstoppable and have an aura of chaos and evilness, proper of this music genre. Not only that, but also, they have their own structure that, little by little, hooks the listener owing to much of their sections, and that talks a lot about how rich this album is in terms of composition. The voice is grim and complements the music pretty well. In addition, I liked a lot the addition of guitar solos (which, nay, serve as licks and arrangements) in the middle of the songs, as each one of them has its particular lick that makes them memorable by themselves. Although the album in itself is pretty enjoyable and effective as a whole (in its majority, I have to emphasize once again), many of these songs are perfect to be added to your black metal playlist individually due to their individual merits and virtues (the solos, riffs, atmosphere or song progression).

Everything OK up to there. HOWEVER, I have come across some problems with this album that impeded me to give it a higher rate.

As I mentioned before, most of the music is intense and fast, but there are some other occasions in which the album takes a more mid-paced approach that ruins the experience due to the contrast with the rest of the album. The track 'Raunen' is the perfect example of this. It is the worst song of the album in my opinion due that it is longer that most of the good tracks that the album has, and it has a strange rhythm that, according to me, tries to be progressive, but that simply fails in being interesting. It really feels tedious and every time I listened to the album afterwards, I skipped that song due to how irrelevant it is for the rest of the oeuvre. Something similar happens with the last songs of the album. Half of 'Nobody Needs This World' and 'Yggdrasil' are not totally bad. Ok, they are actually not bad tracks, but the aggressiveness drop is notorious, and it has to be mentioned. It feels like a tepid ending for an album that started such in a grandiloquent way.

To conclude, I think that the band still lacks some personality to be something really outstanding. The band's voice and musical style kind of reminded me of what a band like Immortal could do (but with solos in the middle of the songs). This commentary may be seen as harsh since this is the band's very first release and I'm complaining about actually nothing, but it's something I wanted to mention in order for the band to take it into account when writing new stuff in a future. Despite this, I'm pretty sure that they can improve with the pace of time and may write more authentic music and with more identity.

In summary, Cosmogony Of Yggdrasil has outstanding songs within its repertoire and, as a whole, might be pretty attractive for black metal fans. It is NOT a masterpiece, and, for me, the band still has to look for their own personality. It is a good beginning, though, a worthy debut indeed. Recommended for those who seek a more melodic black metal, but with that darkness that characterizes this genre.

Rating: 8 out of 10