Down in the heart of the tomb-hall the duo of necromancers known as Fort Wayne, Indiana-based death metal cult DESEKRYPTOR can be found lingering, hovering over its central altar as they invert their process of summoning for the sake of reviving the feral horrors sealed within. Though these folks’ve never been strangers to some manner of avant-garde interest, typically in the realm of atmospheric and dissonant blackened death metal, in this case their latest 7″ EP ‘Sarcophagal Corridors‘ is only experimental in terms of its compositional process rather than style. Even when challenged with approaching their craft from an upside-down stance they’ve yet managed another prime take on raw, bleakest classics inspired death metal action.

Desekryptor have done well to steadily build readiness, personae of their own beyond formation circa 2016 as students of the cavernous, atmospheric sound design and blasphemic esotericism of late 2000’s/early 2010’s death metal and its abstraction. I’d place their ideal somewhere nearby the generation beyond Disma and Funebrarum‘s ideal and the more bestial side of Portal‘s 2000’s set infamy with some Tucker-era Morbid Angel appearing in some of their riffcraft, too. In that sense ‘Sarcophagal Corridors‘ still lines up with the ideas that’d guided their hand on ‘Vortex Oblivion‘ (2023). Within these four relatively short ~3-4 minute songs those standards are (again) upheld but appear in far more succinct, less repetitious forms which are likely the result of the unorthodox approach they’ve undertaken in the process of writing these four songs.

You’d think the whole idea of starting with drum patterns set and then writing riffs around it would be stiff, or at least resemble the thousands of bland bedroom death metal projects (pandemic era especially) that’d develop skill alongside programmed drums but in Desekryptor‘s case it seems to have given guitarist/bassist E.S. a license to swerve, layer-up and create something brutally direct yet cavernous from these patterns. The invaginating vortex of hellish wind that calls beyond the stampeding push of opener “Penance of Hemorrhaging Wrath” quickly smears their canvas with an imposing, militant attack and cacophonous meander beyond. That is to say that they crack off a host of brilliantly direct riff ideas and duck out before it is time to re-up. This is kinda par for the course as each of these songs really just fire off a couple of non-linearly set thoughts, whipping at a handful of riffs until a shape forms and calling it good.

Title track “Sarcophagal Corridors” is probably the best result for my own taste and largely for the sake of it carrying the weighted and meandering charge of ‘Gateways to Annihilation‘ with some dissonant junctures to tie together its more directly blasted movement. The whole of the cut is about ~2:45 minutes in length, so, again we’re only just getting to the point with these songs and moving on in a way that forces Desekryptor to lean into their most direct impact and clip things back to suit the 7″ format. Otherwise I’d found “Leprous Exsanguination” a big standout for my own taste not only for the menacing crawl of peak Incantation-esque riffs in mind but for the ‘Privilege of Evil‘ level guttural growl applied. It was the one piece where I was invested in where it was going immediately and I’d just as well have appreciated that type of song hitting closer to the six minute mark.

While ‘Sarcophagal Corridors‘ is only ~12 minutes in length it doesn’t end up feeling like cast-off or vestigial release. I don’t know if this is a major point of evolution for the band or just a tentative experiment but the results are solid either way. I figure if you were already keen on Desekryptor‘s evolution thus far but felt like they needed to chop their gear down to the most essential impact and get right to the point this EP is a fine distillation of their most violent tendencies which retains their brutal yet atmospheric hand. A high recommendation.

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