ABOMINABLOOD: Dark Creatures In The Vacuum Of Dementia

Release year: 2019
Label: Putrid Cult

Abominablood from Argentina – a solo project consisting of pseudonym Venomous – tread the precarious line between black and death metal, where words such as “war metal” and “bestial black metal” are thrown around with abandon. Whilst far from a household name, the project has managed to put out a number of releases during its existence and, apparently, garner enough interest to release a collection of sundries via Polish Putrid Cult.

I feel it is important to point out that Dark Creatures In The Vacuum Of Dementia is not an album proper; it’s a compilation of tracks culled from various sources, many with less than stellar sound quality. The packaging itself is not very forthcoming at all, offering no information whatsoever on the source of recordings: some are labelled as demos, but for example Unknow Adoration sounds like a live track, but the packaging gives no indication of whether this is so and if so, when it was recorded.

That is only one of the several shortcomings on this compilation. Whoever did the assembly skipped any kind of mastering, resulting in wildly fluctuating sound levels, which is annoying to say the least. Many tracks also have production values that can’t be called good even for a demo – which is what I assume many of the tracks are – resulting in a listening experience which can be called “an acquired taste”. In other words, you’d have to be a pretty die-hard Abominablood maniac to enjoy most of what this compilation offers.

There are a couple of tracks with better sound, such as the first proper track Sundra Karma, and that’s when your average war metal enjoying Joe can dig the album. The aforementioned track is a decent if not particularly original slab of bestial, blackened death metal (or the other way around). However, for the overwhelming majority of its running time, Dark Creatures In The Vacuum Of Dementia offers tracks that sound like shit.

I’m not saying Abominablood are bad, because they’re not. But this compilation is. With proper info on the origin of the tracks, and at least cursory mastering to level the loudness, this could be worth the money for die-hard fans. As it is, it just gives off a very sloppy impression. It’s less the contents and more the presentation I deeply detest – naturally a compilation of live and demo material is likely to sound lo-fi and crummy and is as such directed not to the general audience but to the “converted”. However, a collection of that nature should still be presented properly.

1/5

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