High above the rotting mass of the Incantation-influenced death metal legions sits Dead Congregation, the Greek outfit that has been refining the seething black visage of classic death metal ever since the release of their acclaimed 2008 debut album Graves Of The Archangels. Six years later, and we finally get a follow-up to that high-water mark of contempo death, the eight song Promulgation Of The Fall, filled with intricately plotted blasts of contorted, discordant riffery and malevolent, droning leads, the latter of which are an integral part of the eerie, blasphemous atmosphere that the Congregation summon around their music. The drumming is some of the most ferocious in the field as well, loaded with churning chaotic blastbeats that erupt out of the band's signature slow-motion sepulchral dirge. Atmopsheric touches that the band provides during the album's more subdued moments bring an added depth to Promulgation missing from many likeminded death metal albums, sequences of breathtaking blackened beauty that enhance the blasts of squealing harmonic horror and bone-crushing sludginess with an increased level of emotional power. While their previous releases showcases a brilliant appropriation of the sort of monstrous downtuned deathdoom found on Incantation's Mortal Throne of Nazarene, here it's not till the fourth song "Serpentskin" that the band fully descends into the depths of pulverizing, discordant dread-filled doom that they are so renowned for, unfurling a monstrous slow-motion heaviness strafed by the drummer's rapid fire double bass that blossoms into one of the album's most devastating moments. On occasions like "Schisma", the band can also slip into violent churning chaos that can be almost reminiscent of Portal, but without totally teetering over into a total blast of incomprehensible murk; riffs and melodies are always at the core of these songs, driven by dark stirring songcraft that trades more in pure atmosphere than mere bone-snapping aggression. In their gnarled, taloned claws, the sound of classic, intricate death metal a la Incantation and Morbid Angel is skillfully wrought into something dank and twisted and thoroughly modern. Little wonder that this slab of Luciferian savagery has already made its way onto numerous best-of lists for the year.