Slugging their overflowing coffin through damned and horrified demesne the psychopomp’s grip instinctively tightens within earshot of Seattle, Washington-based death metal quartet DEGRAVED‘s meandering roars from beyond via this unceremoniously fuming debut full-length album. Where these pallbearing geists drag the souls contained within is expected, or, has been clearly foreshadowed by a series of minor releases indicative of the band’s destination here as pure death metal enlightened by the high set bar of the early 90’s underground. ‘Spectral Realm of Ruin‘ delivers upon the band’s early potential with relative ease here, managing more substantive wrangling of the riff beyond the usual study of auld forms and without sounding too dryly nostalgic.

Degraved likely formed as a side project circa 2020 by way of bassist, guitarist and vocalist N.E. (Cystic) who’d played for now defunct death/doom metal band Cavurn at the time. With the addition of drummer Simon Coseboom (Ebony Pendant, ex-Cavurn) they’d released a Finndeath inspired demo tape (‘Exhumed Remnants‘, 2020) sporting a dank olden death metal sound with gasped-out vocals and more of a crunched-at doomed feel, think of early Desecresy if given to circa ’93 demo level capture. At this point most folks know the band for their debut EP (‘Whispered Morbidity‘, 2023) where that original idea was refined towards something more USDM attuned as their (recording) lineup expanded to a quartet. Though it was kinda heavy on its laid black mid-paced motioning there were definitely riffs on that EP and that was enough to fuel hype for ‘Spectral Realm of Ruin‘ today.

Earlier this year the ‘Premonition of Blasphemy‘ (2025) demo tape did what it said on the tin and presented three key songs from ‘Spectral Realm of Ruin‘ in rehearsal form. Rather than wholly polish that sound into a high-gloss state they’ve preserved a caked up dungeon-level grime suitable for an underground death metal band and to the point that Degraved reads raw and blunted, ‘Dawn of Possession‘-esque in its grind through these seven pure death metal pieces. You’ll feel the nuclear overdrive-fed radiation of the main rhythm guitar tone from the moment opener “Pariah of Death & Darkness” begins to slug it out, a heated but fully dead sound wielded within circularly shot riffcraft where a meandering call and (delayed) response form expands within a series of percussive tangents. It is the hairiest rhythm tone I’ve heard since Reverence to Paroxysm‘s LP a while back and truly lends this album its own uglied up, morbid buzz. Throw in one of the gnarliest leads you’ll hear on a ‘old school’ death metal song all year alongside an insane album cover from Hidris (re: Inverted‘s ‘The Shadowland‘ layout/color scheme) and the first impression made by the album and its opener was insanely positive in preview.

From that point they’d generally kept up the riff count and moldering pace. In sweeping quickly through the repetitious grooves and whammy nuking squalls of “Sulfuric Embalming” ’til hanging loose through a break in the middle of the song the action presented here isn’t an unspeakable outlier in terms of style or technique but it does speak to the real thing beyond a cobbling together of referential movements. Degraved have instead presented a strong understanding of what made the classic era of death metal compelling, not the face value stuff but the details of movement that made a song more than a handful of riffs which often manifests as a string of quick-changes just short of the over-active wheeling of records like ‘Eroded Thoughts‘.

There’re nigh moshable chunks of riff found on the path through ‘Spectral Realm of Ruin‘ and even some horror synth trickling down in between the carnage but I don’t get the sense that Degraved are chasing any particularly cheeseball trends here but rather routing their own context through the sounds of the (old) underground. “Unseen” makes pretty good use of bluntly jogged riff progressions and spooky keys as one of the longer, least predictive songs on the full listen and while it doesn’t strike as outright clever as the songs that surround it there is some potential for abstraction lain therein. On the ride through Side B the absolute rupture of the band’s sound holds up, proving mostly versatile as the need for variety starts to ping in mind. Atmospheric breaks and the almost The Chasm-esque roll through “March of the Undead” suggest the band’s approach work could feasibly stretch into more ambitious climes in the future, something drawn further from gunned-out murk of USDM.

The chunk-and-grinding rattle through ‘Spectral Realm of Ruin‘ manages to leave a serious enough dent within it’s ~35 minutes, an event which fires off to start and leaves no real spike of fanfare at the end. Most of what they’re up to on this record has been well extracted by the fourth song as most of Side B does little that builds upon the impact of Side A. It isn’t a lopsided showing so much as a singular, complete thought served without braving anything monumentally different from what’d been promised by their earlier/formative material. I think the only thing I was missing from their build-up here was more of the creeped early Finndeath movement found on their first demo tape. In this way Degraved deliver squarely upon potential indicated and make a great, well above-average debut LP of it. A very high recommendation.

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