Roving the twilight of a star-filled corridor at an alien rhythm they feed off villi-lined cavern walls, absorbing the light through a dark-spherical and obtuse vessel, a tool which Helsinki, Finland-based death metal band Disguised Malignance carve their own architecture with on this functionally set yet still hand-cut void of space. A flux of impressions and less a cerebral connection the instinctive machinery which drives these young fellowes’ debut full-length album is proficiency-based action, rousing movement which nearly always fractures into song or thrumming groove as if handed down by loosely incorporated generations of mutilation-prone hands. Fresh blood set to mutate the old faith and a worthy enough tome left behind.

Disguised Malignance have primarily operated as a duo since forming in 2021 with vocalist, guitarist and drummer Felix Pennanen and bassist Aatos Palmu acting as main performers and songwriters on most of their releases to date, though the band had picked up a full five piece live/rehearsal line-up in the last few years. Considered as a collective what we have here is a ship’s worth of new corpses for Helsinki’s gnarled traditional death metal scenery per folks who’ve gigged with Cryptic Hatred and have their own death metal (Azatoth), death/thrash (Connected) and thrash metal (Hexing) ambitions and enthusiasm in hand as well. Most of ’em are still only just eighteen years old and per my own experience youth doesn’t guarantee a savant songcraft or regimented skill but after hammering out several albums under different projects these last few years ‘Entering the Gateways‘ manages to be the core duo’s most thoughtfully constructed and frankly least generic construct to date.

At a glance and at least some manner of cursory listen Disguised Malignance are neither rawly typical, built from a too-recognizable frame, nor are they distinctly curated between the usual hybrids of ‘old school’ pure death metal (1986-1993) in their approach beyond playing relatively straight forward riff-obsessed forms. The chunking, the grooving and the heavier blasted-at pacing of the band speaks to multiple zeitgeists at once, crosses wires in odd combination, and this was at its most confusing point of fusion on their first demo tape (‘Diabolical Extermination‘, 2021) an enthused and ambitiously pushed set of songs. Their sound had tightened up and matured in concoction by 2023 when the ‘Unearthly Death‘ rehearsal hit, beyond that point they’d apparently signed a record deal and this album seems to be the result of a do-it-yourself approach.

Self-recorded and produced by the band ‘Entering the Gateways‘ is distant, scorched by its mids-fed overdrive and avoids the bulbous fronted aggression one would normally expect from a group in this style. While the production values will bother sticklers and dweebs I’d found it only added some authentic classics-minded timbre to the experience. Most of Disguised Malignance‘s efforts are spent tinkering with both Scandinavian romanticist (“The Fading Path of Existence”) and the brutal-utilitarianisms of North American death metal that’d arisen by 1994-1995. In the left hand the refined tremolo-picked melodic maladroit and chunking doom of Swedish death metal factors in beyond the classics but in the right hand nods to revival of Cannibal Corpse‘s early popularity and their jettisoned grooves sort of apply here too (see: “Confined”.) We could briefly consider auld Finnish conduits of these elements, such as Vomiturition (or, early Nerlich?) but just as soon as one begins to gain hold of Disguised Malignance‘s deal they’re yet prone to change things up song to song. We find more percussive post-thrash era brutal death chunking and bass spanking hits on “Unearthly Extinction” along with shuffling and skanking grooves, run-on leads and a loose approach to both a fizzling/faded guitar tone which already feels a half-mile past what they’d been working up to on the first couple of pieces.

The Bolt Thrower-esque (or, ‘The Karelian Isthmus‘ nodding) riffs on opener “Gates to Nihil” (also closer “Beyond Entering the Gateways”) and their jogging riffs beyond had almost sold a different album to me up front, a place where Finnish death and ‘Erosion of Sanity‘ mingled for a tech-death tinged result sourced from many different portals. By the time I’d hit “Malignant Visions” as Disguised Malignance charged up Side B the chunked-up riff soup of the first half receded for a slight reprise of that original feeling. Around ~2:11 minutes into the piece we’ve suddenly tapped into ‘With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness‘-edged feats or at the very least been given a hit from yet another different portal, and from there it becomes a bit more clear that these folks had experienced some rapid growth, some great influx of ideas while making this record and it’d made for a curious progression of ideas on the full listen but a contiguous conversation overall; “Remnants to Serenity” is a whipper, a chainsaw of a death metal song and probably the peak of the band’s efforts on this first album given its bullish groove and the overall aggression of the piece which does well to feature on the second half.

More than a good start, less than a masterpiece ‘Entering the Gateways‘ does not lack in terms of performative proficiency, brutality and ease of semi-melodic incorporation yet the core singularity doesn’t fully spawn here, there is no one moment where a fully unique entity is arisen with their idiosyncratic knack. Nonetheless Disguised Malignance offer an impressive study of the percussive nature of death metal from a fairly inclusive perspective, bringing the riffs and reaching for some admirable ‘old school’ appeal with natural ambitions (see: “Disengagement Into Eternity”) in mind for the future. They’re all set up with mounding potentiate for something great yet this experience is doesn’t quite hit that nuclear hot point of insanity just yet. A high recommendation.

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