Review PETRIFICATION ‘Sever Sacred Light’

It was in 2018 when a band, hailing from Portland, Oregon, launched a debut album that unleashed pure death metal. The title of the album is ‘Hollow of the Void’ and the band we are talking about is Petrification.

The four-piece takes a next step when it comes to the sophomore album. Inspired by the iconic sound of bands like Autopsy and Bolt Thrower, Petrification used the last five years to work on new songs of which eight of those ended up on ‘Sever Sacred Light’.

To take a bit of a deep dive means mentioning the stellar ‘Oneiric Obscurum’. With less than four minutes the song is rather short but at the same time include a lot of the band’s trademarks. Petrification doesn’t focus on high-speed songs. Instead, the four-piece from Portland is talented in merging the brachial sound of death metal with some demonic slo-mo riffs. All that comes together in the mentioned ‘Oneiric Obscururm’.

No doubt, the band can also shift gears which is shown by the following ‘Temporal Entrapment’ which is a death metal monolith, a sonic avalanche with no chance to escape. Also here, the pace changes are well integrated and unfold the evilish spirit of this riff monster.

These are just two examples of thundering songs that are in line with the rest of this release. Take the merciless hammering ‘seething Cosmological Dread’ or skull-crushing ‘The Hourglass Dissolves’, they are all death metal songs that impress by heaviness and intransigency.

‘Sever Scared Light’ is an album with infernal beauty. Massive metal anthems shine under the light of hellfire and hereby are a delight for headbangers that dig to-the-point death metal with an impact.