[Click play above to stream ‘Rending the Psychic Void’ by Shrine of the Serpent. Entropic Disillusion is out April 23 on Memento Mori.]

If death-doom’ had boxes, Shrine of the Serpent would put a big ol’ check mark next to just about each one. The band, founded by Portland-based guitarist/vocalist Todd Janeczek (also Aldebaran, Roanoke, etc.) took shape out of the prior, sludgier outfit Tenspeed Warlock, and Shrine of the Serpent‘s debut full-length, Entropic Disillusion (on Memento Mori), follows a 2015 self-titled EP and a 2016 split with Black Urn and shows an unmistakable turn toward the darkness. At nearly an hour long and marked by grueling atmospheres like a scar across the face, overwhelming waves of filthy distortion, and the general sense of being coated in a brew that’s equal parts filth and misery, its seven tracks, like any semi-responsible hunter, consume in its entirety, leaving no part of the listener to waste away.

By its very nature, the extremity of lumber brought to bear by Janeczek, former Uzala and Graves at Sea drummer Chuck Watkins and bassist/guitarist Adam DePrez (ex-Sod Hauler, etc.) seems to seek to overwhelm, the ambience as crushing as the riffs themselves, and no doubt that for some listeners, they simply will. Entropic Disillusion, reveling in the muck of “Hope’s Aspersion,” the chugging penultimate cut “Epoch of Annihilation,” and the earlier malevolently-conveyed solitude of “Hailing the Enshrined,” is not at all an easy listen. If it was, the band would have just about completely failed in their mission, which pretty clearly is to steamroll the hearts and minds of those who’d dare take them on. Sounds like hyperbole? It is. That’s the point. Entropic Disillusion, even unto the fact that its intro, “Descend into Dusk,” runs six minutes long before giving way to “Hailing the Enshrined,” is meant to be a work of extremity. It’s supposed to provoke a strong response, to pull one out from behind their mental blockade, and to toss them down a well of ultra-depressive thud.

That’s the thing, right? To celebrate the darkness, rather than be repelled by it? Or maybe to celebrate defying that sense of repulsion to embrace it? Either way, the result is a viciousness of purposeness that Shrine of the Serpent meet head on. Not nearly so lush as some in the style on songs like “Hope’s Aspersion,” with the aforementioned six-minute intro and materia generally so slow, there would almost have to be an emergent atmosphere, though it’s worth noting that even the intro — which one on paper might expect to be piano or something of the like, is stood-out by its foundation-crumbling riff. Bookended on either side by quieter guitar, “Descend into Dusk” indeed lurches forth, leading the listener down the spiraling path that bleeds into the soft opening of “Hailing the Enshrined.” This, like some of the other titles, like the band’s moniker and the name of the record, seems like it might be more derived from death metal, but even at their fastest, Shrine of the Serpent remain decidedly doomed in their pacing. “Hailing the Enshrined” unfurls itself patiently but bursts to full-boar tonality at 2:37 into its 9:47, and flows into an ever-noisier cacophony of pummel before once again dropping out the heavier push and ending on quiet guitar.

The subsequent “Hope’s Aspersion,” though it’s 10 minutes long, immediately establishes its central march and holds to it for most of the first five minutes while also teasing the speedier progression still to come in the second half, in trades back and forth between faster and slower parts, ending with what’s arguably the most brutal stretch on Entropic Disillusion before the weeping guitar of centerpiece “Desecrated Tomb” takes hold, its full, not-to-be-understated heft kicking in before the first minute is out. Something of a roller, it reminds a bit of some of YOB‘s slowest crawls, but of course the stylistic context is different, and Janeczek‘s overwhelming distortion once again holds the day. Watkins‘ drums are effective in punctuating the roll and holding the proceedings together, and DePrez, whether he’s harmonizing on guitar or adding low end, fills out a sound that manifests a mood of disaffection and disdain universally without chestbeating or trying to tout its own righteousness. The only way it goes is down.

That is to say, if you’re looking for that sign of light that many of the bleakest records offer, Shrine of the Serpent aren’t giving. The 4:34 interlude “Returning” is a channel-swapping drone pulsation — I’ve had to stop it a couple times because it feels like pressure in the ears — met with spoken whispers, vague and echoing over other emergent noise. Affecting in terms of its brooding sensibility, it’s further reinforcement of the grim atmosphere that pervades throughout and cedes ground to “Epoch of Annihilation,” which calls back to the more uptempo stretches of “Hope’s Aspersion” eventually, but cakes itself in mud before getting there. It’s linear, forward build in terms of pace, and as the song is instrumental except perhaps from some vague and possibly imagined chants, the movement is all the more at the center. Shrine of the Serpent execute it well and cap with a wash of noise, a slowdown and, for the last 90 seconds of so, a quiet moment (there’s the piano!) that resonates even as it fades into the crash at the start of closer “Rending the Psychic Void.”

Second in length only to “Hope’s Aspersion” at 10:07, the finale of Entropic Disillusion underscores and summarizes much of the purpose of the records as a whole, which is geared toward the wretched and the vicious in intent. Unlike “Epoch of Annihilation,” there’s no surge waiting to happen, and instead, after plodding and growling their way through the first half of the song, the second turns to a long guitar lead that in turn shifts into a final verse and the noise that actually closes out. The rhythm holds together underneath for the most part, but after a few crashes the drums and bass drop out and guitar feedback is the last sound before it, too, fades out. As Janeczek has been arguably working toward this release for a decade since he got started with Tenspeed Warlock, it must be somewhat cathartic to see it realized. Another result of that time, however, is that Entropic Disillusion is also resoundingly sure in its approach, all the more so as a “debut,” and if this is the begging of an exploration of the darkened recesses, Shrine of the Serpent show themselves here of being more than capable of leading the way down.

Shrine of the Serpent on Thee Facebooks

Shrine of the Serpent on Bandcamp

Memento Mori on Thee Facebooks

Memento Mori website