�� We now have the "Die Hard" edition of Anatomia's latest in stock, which comes on heavy colored vinyl and includes a large Anatomia backpatch and large black and white sticker.

��I've been a big fan of everything that I've heard from the Japanese doom-death band Anatomia, who have been offering a twisted take on their slow-motion death metal since forming in 2002, but their latest Decaying In Obscurity takes their crawling heaviness into a new level of putrescent delirium. Like the band states on the back cover of the album jacket, Anatomia specializes in "dismal slow death metal...", but their foul, discordant doomdeath has expanded into stranger regions with this new record, their music now laced with some subtle electronic and experimental touches that gives their newer material more of a unique edge. They've always had a weird feel to their crushing Autopsy/Frost influenced music, previous records often featuring some off-kilter angular riffing and spacey graveyard ambience, but they've really carved out a strange sound all their own on Decaying In Obscurity.

�� When the album starts, the band immediately sinks into the sort of ghoulish glacial heaviness they're known for, opening with the nightmarish melting groans and glowing keyboard slime that begins "Cadaveric Dissection", and the band quickly lurches into a super-heavy, cavernous death/doom assault that shifts easily between fast-paced thrashiness and slothful, cadaverous dirges. Barbaric death/doom with bludgeoning Frostian riffage, strange discordant guitar textures, and gaseous vomit vocals is at the core of Anatomia's sound, with a fucking monstrous low-end presence that makes you feel as if the band is moving through molten lead, but they also mix in some killer, eerie guitar melodies with the downtuned crush to create a strange otherworldly feel. It's not long before you start to hear the keyboards that Anatomia is now adding to their sound, and I love the way they're incorporating them into the mix; the keyboards are used sparingly and sparsely, laying down weird atonal melodies alongside the crushing riffs as well as some nightmarish electronic noises and putrid synth-vomit, subtle droning textures that are situated beneath the grinding glacial crush, adding an experimental, somewhat industrial feel to their Autopsy-esque heaviness that extends into monstrous industrial loops and eerie horror-movie soundtrack ambience that appear on the track 'Obscurity'. This subtle electronic shading never overshadows the death metal, though, as the band bludgeons you with the cavernous D-beat driven death metal of "Garbage", the many passages of glacial bass guitar that slowly wind into immense crawling dirges, the chunky, catchy grooves of "Sinking Into The Unknown" and the blasting frenzy of "The Unseen". The album closes this slab of utterly morbid rot-worship with another chunk of macabre weirdness with the song "Eternally Forgotten", where the heavier riffage drop out completely, and the band lurches through a ghastly funereal crawl layered with eerie keyboards, lumbering bass guitar and smears of clear, atonal guitar.

�� Anatomia have found a perfect mix of atmospheric weirdness and crushing death/doom on this record, and its definitely a new favorite here. The packaging is fantastic, too. Nuclear War Now always puts out quality looking stuff, but the design for this record really stands out, with a heavy gatefold package that has the interiors of the pockets lined with full-color images of glistening viscera that create a striking contrast with Eiichi Ito's dark, surreal artwork on the outside of the jacket, and includes a foldout poster and a printed insert.