Spiraling into henosis. — From unknown ever-coiling strand their vessel of dementia fashions ooze into howling dread. They tack and traipse in unified fringe-scouring travaille, a corollary distinction of entity carved by crooked-handed moulders of morass and malevolence into vortices of bizarre, damned souls ripe for reconfiguration. Wrench your already twisted face in follow of their splattered and canvas sheering blown-out lines, no revelation of buildering comes beyond the forms resultant, obtuse in their plodding and guts-loosening bleed. In the absence of clear-headed observation we will attempt to reconstruct a fitting enough environment to birth Oulu, Finland-based abstract blackened death/doom metal trio Uncreationist‘s full-length debut as tautly refined seepage from the perilous fringes of damned thought. ‘Whirlwind in the Ashes‘ promises nothing short of an hair-raising and sinister slip into the illusory properties of the dark by way of impatient and immersive wave-jamming aggression and an onyx, oiliest skin melting drape of doom.

The whole of the experience which this obviously somewhat weathered and wisened group of anonymous death magick magi conjures is yours to experience and interpret as there isn’t much more than face value context provided. You’re screwed if you can’t find a copy of Uncreationist‘s ‘Demo I‘ tape from 2012 since it isn’t available digitally but I can assure you it was similarly atmospheric, a few longform sketches more clearly rooted in the primitive and eerie side Finnish death metal, blackened but not necessarily sliding into early Beherit territory, and structurally forged within their own major current of avant-garde riff shaping and extreme doom metal directed rhythms. Most of these same things can be vaguely passed on in observance of ‘Whirlwind in the Ashes‘ though I’d found this album marks a more involved exploration of meandering, tension-wracked and dissonant riffs which simmer in between the tank-like death metal grooves and bursts of punchier energetic rhythms the band tend to grind about with.

The momentum of the full listen does eventually slip into its doom-centric pocket but the motor must first kick on and cough up its incendiary gear sludge to start, most of which happens on opener “Wheel of Samsara”. The bestial black/death metal spirit of the band is obscurant and destructive in this initial performance, wherein the musicians take their time warming to a rotten jog-paced attack, slapping at the aforementioned heart of bestial death metal just enough to get a rise out of the listener before leaning into dissociative, chaotic guitar work which sets a compelling enough tone for the full listen. Though I found the ~5:50 minute point of the opener to really “sell” the Uncreationist experience in terms of expressing more than sub-genre shapes and keen enough guitar tones/atmospherics it was “Swaying of Shadows” that rewarded the audio/visual language the band touts, or, clarifies the vision. Eerie keyboard befouled movement and lumbering low doom metal riffs stoke the black flame at the heart of the trio’s sound, a striking enough revelation of endtyme spiritus even if we should consider the bones of their efforts blackened death metal by design.

“Deadly Rays…” expands upon this doomed mood with similar pacing, wrangling a sort of Desecresy-esque (Grönqvist must’ve done the cover art, at least?) inverted percussive guitar riff which suspends the groove in place to start before the half-blasted warp of the song reveals its erratic shaping. This to me reads a bit like certain parts of ‘Towards Divine Death‘ but from a bestial death-rhythmic perspective, slowed and presenting an abstraction of austere death metal statement yet still making the effort to cycle back into itself with a rounded-off phrase rather than a run-on rush of ideas. The hypnotic nature of the band’s collective rhythmic intent is clarified somewhere within that piece but I’d found it all truly came together with the 11+ minute closer “A World Without End”, the general Rosetta stone for the rhythmic language Uncreationist chip away at throughout the full listen; It isn’t so much a summation of all forms introduced but a dense, most dynamic showing to top off the record, an Immolation-esque mode which serves to release the congestive separation of moods experienced throughout ‘Whirlwind in the Ashes‘ and generate a primal endpoint, eh, fitting enough for the hellish expanse of eternity depicted.

Abstract music deserves abstract observation well enough but Uncreationist communicate clear classicist black/death spasming and appreciable extreme doom shaping to the point that the average sub-genre informed listener will appreciate ‘Whirlwind in the Ashes‘ as an experience readable in riff yet speaking in unheard-of tongues. What I’d appreciated most about the full listen was the different directions their unpredictably grotesque affect would spark within the cauldron of sound created, it represents an evolved thought process properly entangled within (or, informed by) ancient and barbaric notions of extreme metal with none of it landing unthinking, overwrought or too scatterbrained to read. A high recommendation.

Info:
ARTIST:	UNCREATIONIST
TITLE:	Whirlwind in the Ashes
LABEL(S):	Insurmountable Rex
RELEASE DATE:	May 26th, 2022

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