While Greek death metallers Dead Congregation will no doubt appeal to fans of the sort of murky, ancient death metal that's current enjoying a resurgence in the underground, there isn't anything retro about their oppressive and thoroughly evil sound. The band draws from the warped doom-laden chaos of early Incantation and the murky dissonant power of Immolation and is obviously rooted in the cavernous, slime-covered depths of the early 90's death metal scene, but Dead Congregation blacken this sound and increase the suffocating heaviness, forging it into their own unique vision. The early Dead Congregation records have been re-issued by Nuclear War Now and are available on both lp and cd, and both their first Ep and the follow up album are highly recommended to anyone into highly atmospheric, dirty, doom-tinged death metal.

The follow-up to the whirlwind holocaust of their debut Ep Purifying Consecrated Ground, 2008's Graves Of The Archangels is a relentlessly punishing album from Dead Congregation, a nine-song descent into Lovecraftian hallucination, catacomb meditations, and Satanic misanthropy writ in excoriating tones. Opening with the extended instrumental intro "Martyrdoom", a swarming mass of dissonant tremolo riffing, warped leads that drip with a feeling of dire foreboding, and crushing drum work, the album moves into a filthfeast of blackened, doom-laden death metal that focuses on a heavily atmospheric sound using layered riffing and weird atonal chords, a sludgy, chaotic heaviness that continues to heavily draw from the influence of Incantation, Immolation, and early Morbid Angel, the riffs carved into labyrinths of dissonant, skin-crawling evil, the guttural gasping vocals rising from clouds of putrescent corpsegas. The songs are crafted around baroque melodies and whirlwind riffing and thunderous blast beats, but are continuously drawn towards passages of devastating doom, slow creeping deathdrags through vast fields of grim atmospheric filth. As the album continues, there are stretches of ecstatic monastic chanting that introduce further feedback-soaked doomed dirges, grinding hook-laden riffage, Middle Eastern prayer-chants and dark droning ambience, and spiraling guitar parts and weird droning passages.