Let’s have a nice creepy dive through a dark and compelling death metal abyss. Open Chest sounds like a throwback to old school death metal, with a few nods to the present. It has the slightly cleaner production of more recent death metal albums, and those really low and really hard to imitate growls that could also only be done in the 21st century. And despite its production, it still has the cavernous and dark tone of early death metal demos. It reproduces the same feeling of exploring the darkness as old death metal releases do.
It starts on a quiet, but slowly speeding up intro, until the riffs of the first song explodes. And it explodes into amazingly heavy riffs, and really evil-sounding vocals. The vocals are definitely good. They are mostly low growls and snarly high-pitched screams, sometimes both at the same time, creating a scary echo. The riffs perfectly recreate that early Entombed vibe, with a heavy and threatening sound, that’s still a bit too fast to be really doom metal, but creates a similar dark and eerie atmosphere.
As for the individual songs: I like how the intro build up and turns into the beginning of the first proper track, Human Plague. The Eve is one of the heaviest tracks, with cavernous vocals, and surprisingly fast, almost thrashy riffs at the end. In addition to a great title, Death Lake has a nice dark atmosphere and great snarly and evil-sounding vocals, sometimes simultaneous with the deeper growls, and one of the best solos on the album. They Lurk in Shadows is somewhat slower and more menacing, with even lower growls occasionally interrupted by screams. Will of Damnation has some really wild drumming.
The album is relatively short, and overall, the songs flow pretty easily. It doesn’t get too long or boring. Maybe some songs are a bit repetitive, but they are still enjoyable because this is an album that’s meant to recreate a certain type of sound and feel, and it does that pretty well. Some of the songs are very good, like Death Lake, Human Plague, The Eve, They Lurk in Shadows and Will of Damnation. The others are good too, because they all have this pretty awesome haunted old school death metal influence. If that’s the kind of music you want to listen to now, and want it to be especially dark and heavy, this is the album for you.
Release date: February 15th, 2020
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