Band: Abscess
Title: Dawn Of Inhumanity
Label: Tyrant Syndicate Productions/ Snapper/ Peaceville Records
Distribution: Suburban
Release date: 15/03/2010
Review: CD

Abscess, the one from Oakland, California, started in 1994 with (former) Autopsy members Chris Reifert (also known from, for example, Death, Burnt Offering, The Ravenous, Doomed or Eatmyfuk) and Danny Corales (Doomed, The Ravenous). Throughout the past years, the band recorded many highly acclaimed releases, the one even better and stronger than the other. Last studio album Horrorhammer (review posted on April 7th 2007) was even better than the former ones – the band seemed to grow time after time – and it wasn’t just a lucky shot back then.
Dawn Of Inhumanity, recorded at the Fantasy Studio (with engineer Adam Munoz) goes on in the vein of most former material, but again it is an even more intense and overwhelming album, filled with varying tracks that have just one thing in common: filthiness!
Several songs, especially at the beginning of Dawn …, can be compared, in a way, to Autopsy (even though Abscess never was, isn’t, and never will be, a ‘second’ Autopsy tout court), meaning: dirty, gore, sarcastic. The tempo might be varying from slow to grinding fast, yet ‘Apocalyptic Doom’, in spite of that tempo, seems to be a rather accurate description. Some songs, however, are ‘different’ again, lifting the average quality of the album op to a superior level. The sublime track Dead Haze, for example, with its acoustics and almost post-blackened and funereal atmosphere, is such an ‘apart’ weirdo-hymn; or what about the Punk injections in  What Have We Done To Ourselves amongst others?… Do I hear some riffs The Exploited alike? And blackened injections, what about them? What with guest vocals by Tyrant Syndicate’s Darkthrone sweeties Nocturno Culto and Fenriz? Aha! Or Psycho-grinding madness, also in Black Winds Of Oblivion, with its demonic second part? Etc, etc…
Sleazy Death-Punk-Doom from the Netherworlds, enlightening and darkening at the same time, that’s what Dawn Of Inhumanity stands for…

91/100

Ivan Tibos.