Album Review – Era Of Tribulation by Dying Embrace

Artist: Dying Embrace

Album: Era Of Tribulation

Label: Armée De La Mort Records

Produced  by: Prabhu Samuel and Dying Embrace

Release Date: December 26, 2012

Not often it happens that I receive a physical copy of the album I’m supposed to review. In the age of internet and iPods, digital downloads have conquered the music industry and rarely do I see people buying any CDs. Well, I believe that physical copies are heaven; every new album brings a blissful spark in my eyes. I would check the shiny and smooth surface repeatedly and ensure that it doesn’t get any scratches. When I hold an album, it feels so real, so bravura and so f**king old school. Talking about old school, here is a band that still releases their albums on 12” vinyl records, the mighty Dying Embrace.

Dying Embrace is one of the pioneering forces of the Indian underground extreme metal scene. Hailing as ‘Misanthrope’ in 1991, the Death/Doom metal band gives a perfect justification as to why Bangalore is known as the metal haven of India. The band cites influences from bands like Black Sabbath, Autopsy, Candlemass, Trouble and Paradise Lost and their music is an awesome blend of bone-crushing old school death metal riffs with a strong essence of skull-pounding, doomy progressions and guttural vocals. After going on a hiatus in 2003, Dying Embrace was brought back from the dead in 2011 to perform in the Undergrind Fest and has developed a huge ‘kvlt’ following since then. Apart from playing in the gigantic Bangalore Open Air Festival last year, the band has been playing in various gigs in Bangalore and co-headlines Trendslaughter Fest every year.

‘Era Of Tribulation’ is a brutal compilation which includes all their past recordings and is available in CD and 12” vinyl. Consisting of 14 ear-splitting tracks, the album can be fragmented into four sections: ‘Misanthrope’ – 7” EP, ‘Grotesque’ – tape EP, ‘Serenades Of Depravity’ – mini album and ‘Dying Embrace’ – Demo. The first section features the two tracks ‘Blood Riots’ and ‘Cromlech Of Hate’ from the ‘Misanthrope’ EP which was released on January 25, 2002. Both the songs feature absolute heavy and unadulterated old school riffs with skilled used of whammy.  Check out for the downright deep and guttural growls on the tracks; they sound purely demonic.

The second section is their 1998 EP, ‘Grotesque’. The sound here gets relatively gloomy and murky and flows with a bit of melody, especially in the tracks ‘The Passing Away’ and ‘Grotesque Entity’. The songs have been tailored perfectly with flawlessly crafted bridges and heavy progressions. ‘Oremus Diabolum’ starts off with an upbeat progression and transcends into a section with doomy riffs. All the songs feature more amounts of variation than ‘Misanthrope’ and often switch between low and mid tempos. The work on guitars is truly amazing on all tracks and the drumlines have been laid impeccably but sadly the production is a bit disappointing. The guitar patches are treble dominant and sound very sharp, often obscuring the vocals.

‘Serenades Of Depravity’ is another release from 1998 and consists of six tracks. The songs, ‘Spawn Of The Depths’, ‘Dagda – His Time Has Come’ and ‘D.T’s’ (an instrumental), display a predominantly doomy sound with essence of death metal, exhibiting strong influences of Candlemass and Autopsy whereas ‘As Eternity Fades’, ‘Degeneration’ and ‘Elegy For The Damned’ are more towards old school Sabbath-ian heavy metal. The trend of mindboggling riffs and grim vocals continue and it just keeps getting better and better with the number of listens. Vikram’s performance has been epic with him displaying his characteristic vomit technique in the tracks ‘Degeneration’ and ‘As Eternity Fades’.

The last bit of the album is the 1998 ‘Dying Embrace’ demo which consists of the demo versions of the songs on ‘Grotesque’ EP. Surprisingly, I found these versions better because of less amount of treble on guitars and the clarity in vocals. The album artwork is insanely sick and has a nice amount of details to it; credit goes to Zizi “Nexro Maniax” Amri.

Summing up, the album is insane and if you’re in for some murky, deadly and brutally heavy underground metal, then go ahead and buy it.

Dying Embrace are:

Vikram Bhat – Vocals

Jimmy Palkhivala – Guitars

Pritham D’Souza – Bass

Deepak Raghu – Drums

Read our interview with Dying Embrace here