GOREMENT - The Ending Quest LP (Purple/White/Black Splatter Vinyl)

Much has been written about the old school revival that has by now – let’s admit it – played itself out. But despite some genuinely valuable works coming out of this period, it was a very specific idea of what the old school of death metal really was. There was more than just death/thrash metal and Autopsy going on in 1990. Although the pedants may wish to point out that ‘The Ending Quest’ having been released in 1994 was really the tail end of death metal’s heyday, it was tapping into untold potentials within death metal that sit within that mid-range that is at neither end of the spectrum when it comes to extremity. Because the focus is not on being the fastest or the most polished, the dirtiest or the slowest, Gorement were able to work away at their craft under everyone’s radar, until they had achieved simple but not simplistic works of sophisticated and nuanced death metal with no gimmicks and no weak points. ‘The Ending Quest’ taps into something profound, eternal. These frankly intangible qualities elevate it above other classics simply because it transcends its own genre and time in a way only a few albums have managed to do over the decades.