Back in stock. If there's one thing that I've learned after listening to a couple decades worth of doom metal, it's that merely slowing one's songs down to glacial tempos and offering dour riffs does not alone make for an enjoyable listening experience. Even the most funereal slogs need a song somewhere in there, which Ephemeros realize in spite of the sheer crawling weight of their music. This Portland, Oregon outfit features members from several punk/metal outfits like Nux Vomica, Graves At Sea and Uzala, but the glacial entropic waste that Ephemeros lay out on >All Hail Corrosion is carved out of the most dismal of sounds, with three epic-length songs spreading out in a black stain of funereal doom across the album. As soon as the opening title track kicks in with its sour lead guitars and plate-shifting tempos, the influences of the likes of Thergothon, Mournful Congregation and Worship reveal themselves, but as far as this sort of abject slow-motion metal goes, Ephemeros do it better than most, due to their ability to craft some solid memorable music underneath all of this misery. A soul-wrenching sense of existential horror bleeds from the band's lyrics, casting dire, depressing visions of a life lived in loss and futility, crushed beneath the weight of time, all hung against the band's stately heaviness; the deep, guttural roar of the vocals is imbued with a mournful emotional delivery that packs some punch, and there are moments where those vocals become more frantic and frenzied. Titanic riffs uncoil beneath the hopeless, sunless atmosphere, the crushing dirge often breaking away into the sound of a lone guitar picking out a lonely melody for a moment, before the whole band crashes back in with another punishing blast of funerary crush. Ephemeros's melodies are effective, emotional, intense; while this doesn't break too far from classic funeral doom conventions, it's really well-crafted stuff, certainly better than most Thergothon-worship I hear, and there are some really great touches like the plangent horn-like reveille that shows up on "Stillborn Workhorse". Closer "Soilbringer" is even more powerful, a devastating slow-motion hymn whose chords form into something that at times seems to echo with the dark power of "Dies Irae", the sound vast and majestic, the singer shifting into a strained howl as the guitars blossom into harmony, gorgeous leads guiding the album downward into torturous slow motion death metal obliteration that takes over the last half of the song. Fans of the more sophisticated melodic doom that bands like Thou, Dark Castle and Samothrace trade in will find much to dig here, despite Ephemeros's distinctly slower and more anguished approach. Comes in chipboard digipack packaging.