Dawn of Ash

Long before the atrocity out of New York named Liturgy disgraced us with hipster pseudo-philosophical black metal, Knoxville birthed what would be known as one of the ideal and early bands to birth a more hyperblasting and relentless form of brutal death metal. I'm of course talking about the legendary maniacs known as Liturgy.

Formed by the Bailey brothers a few years after their endeavors with Brodequin, this band tackles that same sort of sound that appeared on albums like "Instruments of Torture" and "Festival of Death". The riffs are pummeling and in your face, the drums are absolutely relentless, and the gutturals are deep and absolutely fucking ridiculous. I could stop there and tell you to go listen to this album because that's really all you need to know, however this is a formal review so I gotta go more in depth.

To start off you're immediately pelted in the face with these monstrous riffs from the first track accompanied with some blast beats that shred your face off. There really isn't any letting up with these moments save for a few moments throughout the album that do transition into these absolutely crunchy and sloppy chuggy breakdowns like on the title track that more or less ends with a fat breakdown accompanied with blast beats and continues onto the next track. These moments are nice and give a little breathing room for the absolute onslaught of riffs. There's even a pummeling slam riff at the end of "The Bishop's Gathering" that knocks you back in your chair because it feels like it came out of nowhere and, at the same time, definitely felt right for the track.

Another thing to note about this record is this is one of the very first releases featuring Matti Way (also featured on Cinerary's debut album and an extremely rare demo from his old death metal band Haunted), and who you may know as the king of gutturals because of his work with the ever so popular Abominable Putridity and Pathology. His contributions to this record in particular are definitely fresh for an album of this caliber when it was first released and definitely still holds up well today. His gutturals are low and wet sounding, and at points you can even make out some words! Talk about innovation!

Jokes aside, there are a lot of moments on this record that are in your face and ignorant, which is something I tend to enjoy quite a bit when it comes to this sound of brutal death metal. At times the onslaught of riffs can get monotonous because it seems never ending, but there are break ups in the track list with moments of breakdowns or slam riffs. I definitely wish this band had stuck to writing more to see where their sound could've evolved, because despite sounding almost exactly like Brodequin, they do share members and could've been used as a project to incorporate a lot more. Not to say this album isn't great because it is, but it is disappointing the band as a whole never went anywhere after only putting out one album.

Overall, definitely worth the listen if you're looking for some absolute face shredding brutality. There's even a couple cover songs at the end that are worth your time too!

Final score: 90/100

What a lukewarm depiction of brutality. Liturgy has done little more than throw together a series of “brutal sounds” and in the end it’s just a tangle of riffs and squeals. As it happens, sometimes you want to listen to something aesthetically horrendous and Dawn of Ash makes the perfect album. Otherwise, save yourself the time and what effort it takes to sit through this.

The worst feature by a long shot is the vocals. Story has it, Liturgy as hellraising teens once broke into Old Man Cletus’s barnyard and recorded themselves tormenting Cletus’s prize pig, Marlene. Years later, while recording their debut album Dawn of Ash, Liturgy unearthed this relic of childhood in their practice space and decided to lay it down as vocal tracks for the album. This goes on for the entire album, and I don’t just mean all the vocals are horrible – I mean, the vocalist is a robot that never stops for air or to regain composure. These vocals never quit. You’ve never heard stamina like this before, and by stamina I mean a disregard for the necessity of breathing towards survival. It would be awesome if only the vocals weren’t so dreadful.

The music is just mundane. It resembles Brodequin – not a big shock considering the Bailey brothers are in this supergroup of sorts on guitar duties. Like Brodequin’s Festival of Death (their best album), the riffs are awkwardly constructed, the song structures haphazardly poke into one another, and the drumming is fast, monotonous and nearly mechanical. As bad as it sounds, it’s actually not half bad; the music is so fast and machinelike it’s almost entrancing, and like Festival it takes a few listens to notice something beyond shallow, brutal noise. There’s a difference between Liturgy’s Dawn of Ash and its Brodequinian counterpart though; Festival has a memorable sound and inventive style even within the confines of brutal death metal. When you hear two seconds of Festival of Death, you know what’s playing. Dawn of Ash on the other hand is one of copious amounts of brutal death metal handiwork that can’t be distinguished from one another, the only claim to fame being that it “sounds like Brodequin.” Ambient outro before the two cover songs “The Acolyte’s Exoneration” is the coolest and creepiest song; as for the metal aspect of this, ya know, brutal death metal album, I’ll pass.

Dawn on Ash is a watered-down Festival of Death mixed with brutal death metal genericness and infused with incessant squealing where less annoying vocals would ideally go. Nothing to rave about, but if you’re in a mood where you need to hear some metal noise for the sake of noise, this should do it for you. If you want something equally brutal but more gratifying, may I recommend: Brodequin’s Festival of Death.

Liturgy is one of the thousands and thousands of Yankee brutal death metal bands that have spawned during the beginning of 21st century because they heard some Suffocation and wanted to kill like they do. This band however is not "just another brutal death band", Liturgy consists of members from couple better known bands which are Brodequin and Disgorge (US). As a matter of fact there's the entire Brodequin crew (Jon Engman and the Bailey brothers) on instruments and the former Disgorge vocalist Matti Way is fronting...and that's exactly what the band sounds like anyway: Brodequin clone with Disgorge vocals. The instruments are pure Brodequin worship and Matti does those gurgling gutturals as always.

Overall this album is fucking brutal. The music is insanely fast and blasting and then there's some midpaced beatdown sections serving out some more brutality. Liturgy's guitar style is without a doubt similar to Brodequin in this way. Most of the time Mike Bailey goes for real fast and brutal technical riffs which are indiscernible because of the downtuning (what makes it even worse is that many of these "technical" riffs are pretty much ENTIRELY palm muted) but every once in a while he would throw in a heavy and punishing breakdown riff. There's less of the slow parts than you usually hear from Brodequin but other than that there isn't virtually any differences between this band's and Brodequin's sound. There's a whole lot of tremolo picking here... obviously in the fast parts but also in some of the midpaced sections, for example listen to that riff in Scars Of The Saints at 1:25 with that nice groove in it and all. The bass is inaudible and completely drowned under the guitar though that's pretty usual in modern brutal death metal. I've got used to bands doing that but I still miss the old school death metal stuff that always had a very audible bass track... oh well.

The drums are pretty Brodequin/Disgorge as well since the only beats on this album are blast beat and slam. There's insanely fast finger technique blast beats all through the record and when it's time for the slower parts, this guy does crazy double bass in support. The bass drums are triggered and audible but my only complaint goes for the snare. It's almost completely inaudible during the blast beats and even in the slower sections it gets easily drowned under the double bass. Those bass drums are way too loud compared to the snare drum and especially in the blast beats the bass drums drown the snare almost completely. Jon Engman counts way too much on the finger technique blast beating...or maybe it's just the low quality production of this album causing this.

The ex-Disgorge vocalist Matti Way does very low and gargling vocals here. They are completely indecipherable and there's no high pitch or any wide range stuff represented here. Matti just has the same guttural voice all through this record and he conquers a vast majority of the album length with his vocal performance. But for some reason he actually sounds better in Liturgy than he ever did in Disgorge...I feel Matti's gutturals are deeper and more powerful, kinda thicker than his stuff in Disgorge's 2 first albums and all in all he sounds like he's actually putting more effort on these growls.

This record has this outro track entitled "The Acolyte's Exoneration" but it's not very special. There is that fuzzy and bassy noise going through the whole track and in the background you can hear some weird choir type of male singing...this goes on for about 3 minutes and then the fuzz noise stops leaving the singing alone to fade out. But the CD doesn't end there. No, there's still 2 cover songs left and the songs are from....you guessed it, Disgorge and Brodequin! The Disgorge cover "Cognitive Lust of Mutilation" (from their first album) comes first and it's damn good. Then comes the Brodequin cover "Infested With Worms" (this one from their debut as well) and....well what would you expect? Of course it's good! Both of the songs are played a bit faster than the originals (compare the song lengths) and the production is also better (the production on this album is still raw and low quality but Brodequin's and Disgorge's debut albums were even worse) but other than that they aren't really different from the originals. Matti Way does great job with the Disgorge cover with his improved gutturals and since his vocal style is similar to the one Brodequin uses, he executes the Brodequin cover properly too and the Brodequin crew does their job on the instruments well with both covers.

None of these songs really stand out because they're all essentially the same (I won't say "exactly the same" because that wouldn't be so fair at all...or completely true either) since all of them have similarly fast and brutal shit going with the occasional slower sections. Although I could mention the tracks "Worship Incise" and "Solemn" for being the only songs in this album that don't actually start right off with blasting speed. Those songs both start with chugging palm mute riffing and fast double bass in support. Sure they both would eventually bring in the blast beats but in general these 2 songs both have more of the chugging breakdown parts than the other songs in this album. Anyway even though they do have some slamming breakdowns and guttural vocals, slam death metal this is not. Liturgy simply does too much blast beat parts here and too little breakdowns and therefore I'd consider this just brutal death metal.

And as you can see, the songs are pretty damn short too. None of these 8 songs ("The Acolyte's Exoneration" is an outro track and doesn't count as a real song) can even hit the 3 minute bar! And the only reason why the first song clocks in at 3:19 is because there's a 23 second intro in the beginning! Oh well, the last track "Solemn" is the one and only song here that's over 3 minutes long and even then it's JUST AND JUST over 3 minutes! Even the cover songs in the end clock in before 2 and half minutes have gone.

So is it worth picking? Well here's another question to help you decide: do you like Brodequin? If you said "FUCK YEAH MAN!!" then by all means buy this! Your opinion towards this band depends entirely on how much you like Brodequin. But if you answered "nah...not really" or just plain "NO" then....just get the fuck out of here.

Pummeling, non-stop fucking death metal. The new school sound and song writing take on the task of the elders to blaspheme the shit out of the cross and its followers. What a great release this is. I do not feel for Disgorge (US), and I think Brodequin are at best average, but when I heard an mp3 of this band I was blow away. I bought the album immediately, and that was almost two years ago, and I still say this is an absolutely great record. It draws on influences form Brodequin and Disgorge, shit, the members are all members of said two bands, and they play covers of a Disgorge and a Brodequin song at the end of the album, but this band seems to draw upon all of the discarded ideas that would have made those two bands better than average.

The guitars sound much like Disgorge, and the drums are absolutely pummeling, the riffing is pretty sweet, not so much your pinch harmonic laden shred fest, although this is definitely a shred fest. There are some breakdowns, but mainly they are accompanied by constant double bass, so they do not really break down, they just keep the flow of the song, with out breaking it, which I think is sweet for this kind of death metal, and varies it up, so as to not sound like Brodequin, with constant blasting. The tones used are nice and consonant for the most part, and the way he breaks his chords and other stuff is also very good, I really like the melodies and riffs on here, they make this album a pretty somber listen. I also like the fact that this album is from America yet there is no slamming on it. Also the vocals, although low and growly and inhaled are not so typical sounding, but they are not very interesting either; I could best describe them as a filler element, albeit a relatively catchy one.

All in all I think this is a great example of taking their best of two bands and adding them up to make them better than both. It is a shame that this band will disappear under the shadows of its parent bands, and will never live up to the fame they deserve. In fact, I doubt they will even release a second album, I mean I fucking hope they do, but I just do not see it happening. Let us hope I am wrong, and if nay members of this band are reading this, prove me wrong, bitches!

When I found out that Jamie Bailey, and Mike Bailey of Brodequin had gotten together with Matti Way of Cinerary and Disgorge to form the side project Liturgy I was rabidly excited like a Lion masticating on a Christians fibula. Prior to hearing it any consideration that the album would be sickeningly heavy is obvious. I just hoped it wouldn’t be a let down of colossal proportion. After a two week wait I got Liturgy’ “Dawn of Ash” in the mail and promptly put it into my portable disc player for a listen.

After a brief 21 second church bell intro, which in the case of Liturgy is used to call the heathen pilgrims to worship, the song Shrine of Moria pummels immediately into 5th gear. From that point the pace almost never stops and ends only when the final track called The Acolyte's Exoneration closes the Liturgy portion of the record (Two covers follow The Acolyte‘s Exoneration). It was good as I had imagined, but at the same time a bit lacking.

The guitars are played at an amazingly quick pace, as are all of the other instruments. The riffs are exceptional, the blast beats vicious, the bass thundering, and Matti Way sounds like he’s gargled molten lava prior to singing. The problem is the mix/production. As good as each individual is at playing their instrument/singing it all sounds like one large song. Hell, it they would have taken all the breaks out between each song it would be a 30 minute long anti-Jesus track. The best evidence of this is twofold. First, the 6th track is called The Bishop's Gathering. In its last 27 seconds it slows into a brutal chug like a locomotive crushing a line of Catholic’s strapped to train tracks. This is one of the few moments that all the instruments seem to be heard equally. Another way to contrast the Liturgy sound against a similar alternative is to listen to the albums last two tracks that are a cover of Disgorge’ Cognitive Lust of Mutilation, and Brodequin’ Infested With Worms. In these songs Liturgy maintains their sound and that is not necessarily a big deal in that many bands attempt to add their own spin to a song when doing it as a cover. Yet, the problem with these covers is that they sound like a tremendous drone of sound that seems to do nothing for the original songs. This is especially egregious for the reason that the members of Liturgy are current or former members of Brodequin and Liturgy.

Now, I’m no artist, I do not play any instruments, and even though I can sing I do not profess to know how to mix an album during a professional recording session. Also, I recognize that Brodequin has never been a band on any of their albums to have had superior production, although Disgorge with Matti Way was decent. Perhaps the theory behind the type of production/mixing that Liturgy has is that they are attempting to push Brutal Death Metal into a new area of sound. In music as in virtually anything in life, a little experimentation is not harmful and hopefully it makes a band or individual better provided that the “New Horizon” being stretched is rooted in something positive. In Liturgy’ case the sound is merely something that I’m not used to hearing, but that does not mean that it has not grown on me with each listen of the disc. Most paramount is that Liturgy with their mix of Brutal Death Metal veterans have managed to keep their sound and integrity on this slab of vinyl. Overall this a recording worth owning and listening to at a loud volume when caught in church traffic on a Sunday or while having sex with yer dirty and demented girlfriend. Buy it, don’t burn it… KEEP METAL ALIVE!!!!