REVIEW: Desiccation - Legatum Mortuorum
- Jake Leonard
- 41 minutes ago
- 3 min read
DESICCATION are ready to release their follow-up to 2022’s Cold Dead Earth, their debut album. Graciously toeing the line between various styles such as atmo-black, doom, death and post-metal, it was a fine debut. Since then, some of their named influences such as ULCERATE, BLUT AUS NORD and NEUROSIS have released career highs, and this isn’t even scratching the surface - it’s an exciting time to follow bands blending these particular genres of metal together. Legatum Mortuorum is set to follow this trend from start to finish, but whether they do it successfully or not and build from Cold Dead Earth is up in the air.
DESICCATION pull no punches on the opening track, All Light Is Gone, opening with a blackened wall of sound. The song goes through various phases, with chugging guitars, symphonic backing vocals, and guttural lead vocals, all over this tremolo-picked haze from the guitars. And this is all before one final pained delivery of vocals from Soell Bratt to end the song.
Second track Cursed in Cold Silence ups the ante, starting with a backdrop of a wall of fuzz, just getting louder and louder, the entire song taking place within this face-melting, monolithic sonic landscape. With a much slower tempo compared to the first track, this effect absolutely comes through, most notably in the nearly two-minute outro, with an emphasis on the repetitive guitar riff and synth line, as the drums pound into your skull.
Up next is title track Legatum Mortuorum, the centrepiece and sole pre-album single here. Once again we get a blackened wall of chords, a suitably gloomy doom riff, but also some wonderful drumming. The ride cymbal appears at just the perfect level in the mix and the blast beats propel the song forward. The whole thing has a real sense of momentum behind it, only stopping for one small moment and immediately rushing back in like a tidal wave to underpin a DEATH-esque solo. And we’re only halfway through the song at this point. The rest of the song delivers with the same level of intensity and dynamic push and pulls - absolutely worthy of its title track status.
The Alchemy of Grief and Ashes Unto the Abyss continue the theme up to now. Both noisy ordeals with gnarly, growled vocals, oppressive atmospheres. The former slows down about halfway through and almost becomes ethereal, with the background vocals providing a healthy counterbalance to the hellish instrumentation, before suddenly speeding up again at the end. The latter is closer to sludge/post-metal, with slightly muddy production that doesn’t feel out of place, with gorgeous backing vocals throughout, under some of the most violent screams the record has to offer, and at times an almost hopeful-sounding chord progression.
All this is in service to the final track, the epic 12-minute Lamentations Beyond the Veil. An exercise in dynamic changes and ambitious song structure, this is where DESICCATION have to prove they can stick the landing. There’s a moment about two minutes in which might be the single most intense passage on the entire record, evoking images of apocalypse, the seemingly never-ending blast beats and ever-pervasive wall of sound grinding themselves into your skull. Finally, at the halfway point in the track’s runtime, there’s a little glimmer of hope in the chord progression, specifically the second chord played, once again slipping through the cracks. But the fourth chord in the sequence is almost sinister-sounding in stark contrast to this, and in what is possibly the most eerie moment on the record, it lingers on this, leaving the last few minutes of the song to an ambient piece, before slowly fizzling out. It’s an unexpected direction for sure, but it’s a bittersweet reprieve from the sheer doom of the record.
On their second full-length effort, DESICCATION have evolved, their sound has equally become more grand and cinematic, yet also more unrelenting at times unnerving. While it does occasionally run out of surprises for the listener, it’s hard to feel upset about this when the music simply sounds this good. Overall, this band is one to look out for in the future - give this a listen.
Score: 8/10
Legatum Mortuorum will be released on 15th May 2026 via Carbonized Records.
Words: Jake Leonard
Photos: James Bratt
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