Decaying- Encirclement Review

I reviewed Decaying’s EP devastate earlier in the year, and whilst it was a good EP, it felt slightly unfinished. Their full length entitled encirclement is what it should have sounded like. Where previously the band stuck to some old school death metal rules whilst trying to write their own, here they are unashamedly writing their own rule book.

Here they mix prog and death metal like water and well… water. It goes together so well and the transitions are flawless. This is a band that knows what they want to sound like and is making all possible steps to sound like they want in their heads. From the opener of the instrumental track Initiation to the straight up death metal of From the Cradle to the Grave (though at first I thought it was a cover of the Cradle of Filth song of the same name) this is a seriously strong musical output.

In my review of the EP I said that the track lengths seemed like they varied in length too much, in the full length they addressed this with making the album more flowing by making the tracks mesh together better. If the EP had done this I wouldn’t have said a bad word, now that the album has, I am overjoyed.

This is a band I am slowly falling in love with each time I hear something new, and with only a few faults (like some tracks fading out, that really gets on my nerves) I have to say that I loved this album.

9/10