Dear world, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for a lot of things, but not sorry for more. Currently, I’m most sorry that I almost twice let Our Place of Worship is Silence slip through my headphones. Simply for thinking, based on name, they were some sort of atmospheric black metal project. I just wasn’t having it at the time. Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong, could I? And you know what? Good. I’m fucking glad I was wrong.
I dunno what it was, the name just sounded so haunting, cultish, and bleak. It's a great name too when it inspires those thoughts by name alone. For a band to have some punch based on that alone is pretty impressive these days. And while Our Place of Worship is Silence is certainly atmospheric, bleak, maybe a little cultish sounding—definitely haunting—it’s also brutal and pissed off enough to flay the skin from bone, track after track.
Down from four members to two (R.I.P. Tim Butcher), Tim Gaskin (drums, vocals) and Eric Netto (guitars, vocals) push forward with some of the most unforgiving, raw, blackened death to be recorded. Hell, they wrote an album called The Embodiment of Hate, and then chose With Inexorable Suffering to follow it. There’s just no room for frills here.
“Artificial Purgatory” opens the record, and it’s like the band are getting their gloves on. A little introduction that builds and gets torturous quickly. However, it’s “Chronicles of Annihilation” that get things steamrolling. The suffocation and aggression make for this and every track to follow feel like a choker. It’s with this bleak atmosphere that the tracks become bleeders; meaning you may not notice the devil's in the details.
Underneath everything, Our Place of Worship is Silence make some structurally interesting stuff. The guitar work, in particular, is awesome. Beneath the fog of all this heaviness exists slick building sequences like in “The Blind Chimera and Its Death” where the song slowly builds towards the end and buried in the background is some haunting dissonance. “Defiance and Upheaval” balances a savage as hell barrage sequence while Netto lets his guitar wail.
Where the band also truly shine is in their bestial rhythmic sections. There exists plenty of underlying stuff, but even if you listen to this album as background noise, you can’t help but constantly pick out on the incredible riffage and drumming that constantly litters this album. Song after song, minute after minute Our Place of Worship is Silence have crafted some incredible tracks. “Lawlessness Will Abound” being among their best, as the track is a nonstop war machine and goes for nearly eight minutes. It’s the kind of thing you have to sit down, listen to, and let pummel you.
With Inexorable Suffering is bestial and beyond—that’s the best way to put it. There’s a hungry animal slowly tearing its way through the speakers track after track. It’s an album that needs your attention, but if you’re not willing to give it, the band will still beat you bloody. Is it rewriting the book on black/death? It’s definitely getting there and if there’s a band that’s going to twist the genre’s insides, these guys are going to be the ones to do it.
Score: 8/10
Buy With Inexorable Suffering from Translation Loss Records. Chris Luedtke is on Instagram.
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