Bandcamp Bekor Qilish is Andrea Bruzzone’s solo project, and Consecrated Abysses of Dread is the third entry in a catalog that has been getting weirder with each release. Bruzzone plays everything except where he doesn’t, and where he doesn’t is where the album gets its most distinctive moments. Mick Barr, of Krallice and Orthrelm, contributes a guitar solo to the opener. Gabriele Gramaglia of Cosmic Putrefaction lends vocals to two tracks. Lisa Voisard, Saprovore of Strigiform, Mauro Scarfia all add layers across the runtime. The album is short by extreme-metal standards: ten tracks in thirty minutes, the longest piece running just over four. None of the songs feels truncated. They feel like Bruzzone making the case that this is exactly how long these ideas need to be.
The reference points are not subtle. The press copy invokes Cynic, Atheist, and Pestilence, and you can hear all three in the rhythmic vocabulary, the way the riffs refuse to settle into death metal’s standard pulse. But where those bands operated in the early-nineties space where progressive death metal was still being defined, Bekor Qilish has the benefit of three decades of avant-garde black metal to fold in alongside. The result reads as both a continuation of the early-tech-death tradition and a strong departure from it. Tracks like “Emptiness-Wrought Cognition” and “No Solace At The Eschaton” alternate between blast sections and odd-meter instrumental passages, and the harsh-clean vocal contrasts give the writing a theatrical dimension that feels more in keeping with bands like Aluk Todolo than with any specific tech-death lineage.
The middle of the record is where the runtime works hardest. “Everlasting Advent Of Eternal Forms” splits across two parts, and “The Harmless Mask Of Disembowelment” arrives at under two minutes as the most concentrated thing on the album. These short tracks function like movements rather than songs, and the cumulative effect rewards a single end-to-end listen more than playlist-style sampling. “Where Horror Fadeth, Error Transcendeth” is the longest piece on the record at four-and-a-half minutes, with Mauro Scarfia’s guitar solo as the centerpiece, and it makes the strongest case for what Bekor Qilish does at length. The track has the structural patience that the shorter pieces deliberately deny.
The closing pair tilts the album back toward atmospheric territory. “The Abyss’ Voice Grows Distant” pulls back from the density of the middle stretch, and “The Fall Of Mortals In The Appearance Of The Unnameable” closes with Lisa Voisard’s voice carrying passages through what would otherwise be a wall of distortion. The closer’s structural shifts (atmospheric clean passages into massive heavy returns) give the album a dynamic resolution that matches the title’s eschatological tone, even if the production choices flatten some of the contrast that the writing sets up.
Mauro Scarfia produced, mixed, and mastered at Rosewood Basement Studio. The mix has the assets you would expect from someone working closely with the writer: the lead lines cut through the saturation, the harsh vocals sit prominently in the front, and the structural shifts read clearly through the arrangement. The trade-off is the contemporary loudness target, which compresses the internal dynamics within the heavy sections and pushes the upper-mid register hard enough that the cymbals and guitar transients can fatigue across the full thirty minutes. The bass articulation gets buried in the densest passages, fusing into the rhythm guitar mass, which is a recurring issue in modern self-produced extreme metal. For a record this concentrated, a slightly more open mix would have given the writing more breathing room.
Italian extreme metal has a deep bench right now, and Bekor Qilish sit closer to the experimental end than to the more mainstream successes. The closest sonic kin in our catalog are probably Ponte del Diavolo on the Italian-underground side and The Holeum on the cosmic-progressive side, although neither band overlaps with Bruzzone’s specific vocabulary. I, Voidhanger Records have built a reputation as the label for projects that no major would touch, and Consecrated Abysses of Dread fits that mandate exactly: a solo project, an experimental scope, a thirty-minute runtime, a 200-copy LP pressing.
The mix is dense, mid-focused, and mastered at high contemporary loudness. Guitars carry the bulk of the frequency spectrum across saturated rhythm and articulate lead work, with the lead lines cutting through cleanly and the rhythm guitars occasionally fusing with bass in the heaviest sections. Drums are close-mic’d and dry, with kick punchy and articulate, snare sharp, cymbals leaning toward harsh in the upper-mid range. Vocals are placed forward with good intelligibility despite the harsh delivery, and the clean-vocal passages read clearly through the layered arrangements. Dynamic range is restricted within the heavy sections by the loudness target, with the song-level structural shifts (atmospheric breaks, clean passages) carrying the contrast rather than internal volume variation. Harmonic complexity runs high throughout, reflecting the layered guitar work, multiple guest contributions, and frequent meter shifts.
Standout tracks: “Emptiness-Wrought Cognition” for the opening statement and Mick Barr’s solo. “Where Horror Fadeth, Error Transcendeth” for the longest and most structurally patient piece on the record. “The Fall Of Mortals In The Appearance Of The Unnameable” for the closer that lets Lisa Voisard’s voice carry the resolution.
Consecrated Abysses of Dread is the kind of album that does not negotiate with the listener about its length, its density, or its references. Bekor Qilish made a thirty-minute record because thirty minutes was what the ideas required, and the result rewards close listening more than passive intake. The production choices push hard on loudness in ways that flatten some of the dynamic contrast the writing sets up, and the bass definition gets compromised in the densest sections, which keeps the album short of fully realizing its potential. But for a third record from a solo project on a tiny Italian label, with Krallice’s guitarist passing through, Consecrated Abysses of Dread is exactly the kind of release that would never reach a larger audience without people pointing at it. So here is the pointer.
