One of the more anticipated debuts to surface recently, Charnel Passages is the first full-length album British death metallers Cruciamentum, something that I'd been looking forward to ever since picking up their crushing split EP with fellow rot-crawlers Vasaeleth that came out a couple years back. As they've done on the handful of EPs that have come out since forming in the late oughts, this sees Cruciamentum rumbling through a cavernous, lightless realm of classically-minded death metal draped in black rot. They're building on the darker sounds of early 90's brutality, influenced by the likes of Immolation and Incantation, but Cruciamentum stand out with their own unique atmospheric and compositional flavor, writing solid, effective death metal that's also infused with echoes of classic British doomdeath.

The resulting seven tracks are strong stuff, crushing blasts of grim, grinding heaviosity, developing eerie minor-key melodies around the doom-laden crush, shifting into blasting assaults of high-speed violence. Subtle orchestral synth and funereal organ-like ambience stains the slower passages that gape open on tracks like "The Conquered Sun (The Dying Light Beyond Morpheus Realms)", sheets of sepulchral sound slipping over the craggy riffage and swarming blackened guitars. Cacophonous guitar solos lacerate some of the album's more violent tempo shifts, and unusual time signatures surface beneath those huge riffs; much of this follows winding, labyrinthine riff-structures that one can easily find themselves lost in. A perfect combination with the band's intensely dark lyrics, which evoke vast Lovecraftian voids, states of soul-death and infinite emptiness. All of this is delivered with a skillfully enunciated performance and a thunderous, detailed production that never slips into the sort of brackish sonic murk that's typical of newer bands schooled on that seminal Incantation sound. Charnel Passages impresses not because of suffocating ambience, but by delivering music that evokes the monstrous majesty of classic death metal, built on massive riffs and evil atmosphere that coalesce into memorable songs. Superior stuff that sits alongside the likes of Dead Congregation, Disma and Grave Miasma (which shares members with Cruciamentum). Comes in terrific surrealistic album art from Daniel Desecrator that features spot-varnish printing on the CD slipcase.