Cut back to the rawly stinging quick and reeking of miserably struck brutality this fourth full-length album from Salvador, Brazil-based death metal quartet ESCARNIUM spikes in mind as deeply and quickly as an impinged nerve, each bite of its intensity raising even more corporeal dread. Roaring in ear and rearing back in order to express profound nihilistic dismay ‘Inexorable Entropy‘ deftly builds upon the band’s more recent habit of mind-bending atmospheric interjections alongside an even more succinct crush through their brazen death metal assault. While the whole event does technically amount to iteration beyond their previous LP this doesn’t stop these folks from putting together their finest release to date.

Escarnium formed circa 2008 as a quartet as far as I can tell, eventually expanding to a quintet for their first demo CD-r (‘Covered in Decadence‘, 2009) with a sound that fans of 2000’s Polish death metal will particularly appreciate… though their spin on it was suggested as a mixture of Krisiun and Swedish death metal ideals, something like Vomitory or Denial (Mexico), in terms of its brutality and roll. The band’s own taste was probably closer to something like the second Hypocrisy album or the debut from Amorphis but this didn’t translate all that directly into their sound until much later on. Their brutal, direct to skull attack carried over into a far more refined debut LP (‘Excruciating Existence‘, 2012) as they’d taken on something more Incantation-esque in terms of guitarist Victor Elian contributing vocals with a deeper, sickened register and the production values focusing on spongier, downtuned guitar rides. It is an especially fine example of a full-length debut delivering upon the promise of a band’s demo days in style.

I’d discovered Escarnium around 2016 by way of a Headhunter D.C. cover they’d contributed to a series of tribute albums but this was the extent of my interest at that point as their release of a sophomore LP (‘Interitus‘, 2016) that same year didn’t stand out to me. Sure it was clearer set, better produced and certainly louder in the mix, but largely generic in terms of its composition as they went on eking out small points of interest within a blur of just average songs. That’d been the extent of my interest in the band beyond a quick skip through their most recent LP (‘Dysthymia‘, 2022), a sea-change for Escarnium that’d been the main foreshadowing for what we find on ‘Inexorable Entropy‘ as an intoxicating, darker atmospheric form of death metal which balances out the hammer of their sound with variously fiery and delirious modes.

No matter which Escarnium record you pick up these guys’ve always aimed for a straightforward approach a somewhat mild-yet-densely stated death metal specificity which is organic in render, brutal (but not ridiculously so) in meter, and stated in direct avoidance of tech-death/modernity. That’d changed a bit via their third LP, a return after a long seven year absence with an emphasis on atmosphere and tension while still exercising those strictures/values to some degree. ‘Inexorable Entropy‘ more-or-less iterates upon the heady-yet-brutal sound and style found on ‘Dysthymia‘, incorporating different guitar techniques which emphasize the atmospheric gloom of their work alongside the harder-slapped edge they’re best known for. The only (arguable) downside to this next stage of refinement is that it almost blazes past too quickly to leave much of a dent.

Throwing a rusty wrench in their own gears to start the short intro piece “Fentanyl” doesn’t fully make sense in the context of Escarnium‘s latest album, particularly when set next to song titles like “Revulsion of Carbon” and “Relentless Katabasis”. That specific prescription drug reference manifests within a one minute piece which features an addict describing the feeling of death (or, dissociation) arisen from use, setting an odd tone for the full album which is never expanded upon in theme or further sampled speech. That moment built a brief expectation for a bad deathgrind or sludge album… nothing all that close to the elite atmospherically charged death metal hammer that’d landed soon after. Likewise the mushy filler instrumental “Ashen Path” over on Side B appears slightly out of context, a passage to pad the album further beyond the half hour mark. Another three minute death metal song might’ve made a lot more sense from my point of view. This was the only off-putting aspect of ‘Inexorable Entropy‘ at face value, an album that revels in its atmospheric menace yet can’t quite push the meter past thirty minutes without some bland filler along the way.

Opener “Relentless Katabasis” offers a fine and clear-as-day window into Escarnium‘s best traits, starting with the Immolation-esque burl of their riffs, a lightly blackened death-machined gear that relies on wandering tremolo-picked movements for transition and raising tension. With most every song here landing within the ~4 minute range their rush of brutally rattled and roaring death generally presents concise and complete thoughts in most every case, dallying for the sake of atmospheric berth and often. There is yet a post-Angelcorpse and/or Krisiun era militance to their rhythmic muscle memory yet when the pace slows and breathes its odd breath the effect is something like Krypts (or, Fossilization for that matter) sans any outright doomed movements, as similar use of cryptic and creeping riff progressions to haunt and hammer around. “Cancerous Abyss” is a fine example of this beyond its guitar solo (~2:45 minutes in) as the song generally follows a similar dynamic blueprint as the opener.

The title track (“Inexorable Entropy”) flexes some of Escarnium‘s rare lead guitar bravado, a sort of rocking uplift a la more recent Incantation, which not my favorite part of the album but a the song itself notably begins to break away from the fixated mode that introduces ‘Inexorable Entropy‘ as the band explores moodier, groovier attacks. We get something a bit more active, more ‘Close to a World Below‘ within the stamping and slashing torsion of “The Heritage”, a compacted but dramatic piece which once again best showcases the brutal yet atmospheric traditions that Escarnium are pulling from at their core. Here I’d suggest the shorter, more frantically wailed on lead guitars are more fitting for the band’s violent rhythmic push.

Getting to the point within shorter pieces places more of an emphasis upon the parts of Escarnium‘s sound which are typified, such as the vocals which sustain a similarly flat proposition in narrative of the entirety of the album, appearing at a similarly patient cadence throughout. While those performances are suitable and sub-genre apropos when considering the evolution of Escarnium‘s discography and the progression of their sound per the previous album it is the least developed part of their gig beyond some additional doubled-up vocal layers used here and there. The biggest surprise here is probably “Pyroscene’s Might” an album closer that brings in some different rhythmic ideas which almost feel inspired by the (earlier) Ulcerate side of blackened death more than anything else. It all feels like it is over before we truly hit a real breakthrough within any of this material yet all of it is pretty solid in its continuous sluice between slapping and drifting death save for a couple of small gripes on my end.

Though I’m not sure the brevity of ‘Inexorable Entropy‘ is its best characteristic it nonetheless feels modestly substantive for its density, offering mild variety beyond the usual while still inhabiting a recognizable sort of place and pacing for this version of Escarnium. I’d found the full listen was captivating upon introduction and enjoyable for its general trade-off of stylized pacing once familiar yet the great impact of my time with it was only just skin deep beyond a certain point. This is entirely fine for a death metal album from an artist with a ‘no bullshit’ policy in hand though it didn’t make for an album that’d fully stuck with me, at least not far beyond appreciation for some rad atmo-death sounds and brutal vibes. A moderately high recommendation.

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