Weirding, braying and neon-spraying their way through this third and most deranged full-length album Oakland, California-based death metal duo STATIC ABYSS return even more rabid and eclectic a few years later. Readied to take their off-the-cuff nightmarish lurch into even more surreal mayhem ‘The Dying Hunt‘ best achieves the band’s crossover between grinding, hardcore punk and doom-prone death metal vantage point. Built wall to wall with maniac energy reserves built in their work here bears far less laxity moment-to-moment, a busier and broader minded approach to these strong personalities intertwined.

Static Abyss formed in early 2021 as a side project between Greg Wilkinson (Deathgrave, Brainoil, Earhammer Studio) and death metal legend Chris Reifert (Autopsy, ex-Abscess, et al.) during a lapse in activity due to the pandemic. Their first album (‘Labyrinth of Veins‘, 2022) [Review] was basically writ and cut from the hip in studio/on location lending it a unique timbre but pretty familiar punkish, often doomed and altogether surreal death metal from their hands. As a studio only project they were quick to fire on more material within roughly a year via ‘Aborted From Reality‘ (2023) [Review] upholding the style of Wilkinson‘s quick-witted ventures while tempering the production values toward his usual standard and arguably leaning into more doomed-out material than the first. I’ve been a fan of this undertaking for a couple of reasons but the main draw is that their approach is more spontaneous, never overworked and thusly bears a sort of aimless, stymied sense of wandering mania as it plays out.

Now that the stupor of the pandemic era and the trash diet of high frequency, low-thought death metal momentum it’d produced has been chopped in half by AI-assisted socioeconomic collapse… revisiting Static Abyss‘ discography thus far yields no less impressive instinct and characterization wherein Reifert‘s bug-eyed n’ spittin’ vocals and Wilkinson‘s unique approach to lead guitars still read as strong personage today. For album number three those traits no doubt come built-in but with the additional precision of Chad Gailey (Mortuous, Necrot, Carbonized Records) on drums and what is inarguably the most polished-up and lucid production values from their crew to date. The band remain largely the same force otherwise.

For ‘The Dying Hunt‘ Static Abyss‘ve fleshed out their mangier hardcore punk/crust excited side, particularly on Side A, and allowed their tempo map to veer freely from the mid-paced kicking of their first two records more often. Opener “Skull Blasted” scrapes out the aforementioned signature (see also: “Bleeding in the Fog”) action up front albeit in a grinding sub-two minute piece but the two songs that follow, “Lobotomized at Last” and title track “The Dying Hunt”, reach for their range of punk-adjacent inspiration most clearly up front. The latter piece has everything that kinda stands out about this project as a foil for Wilkinson‘s sensibilities in tailoring songs which suit Reifert where doom, death, grind and a few hardcore punk riffs all line up into a mind-bending ’til ranting throughfare. The trio’s work here is even more composed and packed with changes than ‘Aborted from Reality‘ but the off-the-cuff swing of the band isn’t necessarily lost in the process.

The major standouts here (“Lobotomized at Last” esp.) are mostly pumped up front with “Wall of Delusion” providing key fuel for my own interest in the band’s speedier craft but the whip through “Defleshed and Forlorn” later on served similar purpose on Side B. Otherwise Static Abyss continue to excel within their longer, weirder stretches such as “Nowhere Forever”, closer “Darkness at the End of the Light” and such. As the album progresses the lead guitars find a bit more variety, the basslines kinda dance around more than usual and these elements create a sort of living, breathing changeling morphing between its various fusions and formae.

The balance of mangier, harried expression and crisped up production values achieved within ‘The Dying Hunt‘ does their broadened range of action some great justice here, making it the sharpest listen from their lot to date. If you’re not a fan of the vile hysterics and sub-genre mélange that is Static Abyss I don’t know if the upped melee here will necessarily reshape your total impression of the project but it does present a still-evolving addressal of their ouevre. From my point of view it is their best work to date, the only gripe I could manage here is the cover art which is just kinda whatever. A moderately high recommendation.

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