Desiccation - Legatum Mortuorum

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Desiccation is a blackened doom metal band based in Nevada City/Sacramento, California and formed in 2020.  Their latest release, “Legatum Mortuorum,” is their second full-length album.  It isn't often that I hear music that legitimately sounds frightening. Desiccation's “Legatum Mortuorum” is an album that truly sounds horrifying. This is definitely the type of underground metal that embraces the days of old where the genre, specifically black metal and other extreme forms, actually felt a little dangerous. 

If I went back in time to the wrong period, “Legatum Mortuorum,” would get me killed in any number of ways. If you're not listening to music that could get you burned at the stake, then what the hell are you even listening to?   This album recalls the days when listening to extreme, underground metal felt like a mystical, unnerving thing to do and other people didn’t, or couldn’t, understand.  The music of “Legatum Mortuorum,” is pure darkness.  But it isn’t a darkness that swallows you whole and destroys you; rather, it is a living, breathing void that allows you inside.  As you discover its many dark corridors and levels, the realization that the only way to face the darkness is to become it sets in.


The production is absolutely amazing.  It is raw and deep but doesn’t have that stupid, muffled sheen over it that so many raw blackened metal bands use in a vain attempt to sound evil.  “Legatum Mortuorum,” feels honest in a very surreal and stark way.  The impact of this album weighs heavily, and it is entrancing in its own way. 


My favorite aspect of this album is that it embraces both a blackened, distorted world and one that is atmospheric.  Every part of this album is extreme and heavy—it is quite dense, almost maddingly so.  However, it’s also subtle with its atmospheric textures that push their sound even deeper into depravity. 


All six songs are great on their own and, of course, provide an optimum experience if listened straight through.  But three songs in particular are really important to the album and must be talked about.


“All Light Is Gone,” is the opening song and starts off with preternatural fury.  As far as doom goes, the band isn’t overly slow and aren’t afraid to embrace speed when needed.   The quick opening is great because it lets the band cut loose early, giving them time and reason to settle into a doomy groove.  The bass and clean vocals can be heard in all the chaos, a testament to the albums aforementioned subtleties and production values.  The riffs go between bouts of blackened speed and suffocating doom metal riffs—it feels very jarring and that’s only a good thing for an album like this.  This song also showcases another element that’s used exceedingly well and that’s the lead guitar.  It isn’t flashy but isn’t supposed to be.  It settles in nicely between the riffs and rhythm, sprawling out like the tendrils of something unknown and deadly. 


As I always say, an album’s title track should be one of the best on an album and “Legatum Mortuorum,” doesn’t disappoint.  A lot of the denser riffs on this song are among the album’s best and the bass sounds amazing through the atmospheric layers.  The vocals are fantastic, the perfectly pitched black metal vocals that sound pained and visceral at the same time.  After a solo that slithers in and out of the labyrinth, the song pulls back on the tempo and lets the ghostly theatrics swell up into a distorted inferno of towering presence.


The final song, “Lamentation Beyond the Veil,” is my favorite on the album. It's eleven minutes of everything that makes this album so good.  It’s a twisted, deep, bleak journey that isn’t to be taken lightly.  The tempo ebbs and flows between lumbering doom, a mid-paced mixture of grim and guile, and fast paced black metal.  The final few minutes find the band really letting their atmosphere cast through, almost cinematic in a way but it doesn’t take away from the grim realities of the song, or album in general.   


Black and doom metal, at least to me, have always seemed like they were meant for each other.  I’m glad it’s growing in recent years, changing into a legit genre.  Desiccation’s “Legatum Mortuorum,” is a fantastic step forward for the style and a must listen for fans of esoteric, ghastly, ghosty, extreme metal.  


Rating: Excellent

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