Rigor Sardonicus - Vallis Ex Umbra De Mortuus

Rating: 8.1

Country: USA

Release Date: 2008

Track list:
1. Mane de Maeroris 01:33
2. Siens Somnium 07:02
3. Incompertus quod Anon 05:28
4. Laudare Apocalypsis 04:22
5. Alveus de Somnus 04:18
6. Prophecies I - Preapocaylptia 04:00
7. Agony 06:23
8. Rex Regis Fortuna 05:52

Total playing time 38:58

Band Website: Rigor Sardonicus

Rigor Sardonicus - Vallis Ex Umbra De Mortuus

Joseph J. Fogarazzo: Guitars/Vocals
Glenn Hampton: Bass

Now this is an album which I have seriously dreaded to review. Save for this one attempt, I have failed in every other attempt I have made to write on it, and the time which I had allotted out of my busy routine to the process ended up being the time I've felt most lifeless and miserable, never mind all the buoyant enthusiasm rushing through me before that. This is because Rigor Sardonicus' ‘Raw Apocalyptic Doom' music insidiously permeates your body and incapacitates your movements whilst numbing your sensory and thinking abilities. So invariably, you end up sitting there listening to the music with as much life in you as a corpse, and worse, you begin feeling like one too.

The opening flute and tambourine instrumental barely prepares you for what you are in for. Its purpose in fact is to warm up your heart and make it pliable for what's in store for it: severe and prolonged wringing done excruciatingly slowly, even after it has probably stopped beating just for the sake of honouring their contract. “Silens Somnium” sounds like demo-era Disembowelment covering early Skepticism and suffused in light Godflesh-esque ambience. Next couple of tracks makes it even more difficult for you to endure the oppressive and seemingly interminable suffering, supplanting Skepticism influences with that of Thergothon and old Worship. Nothing really eventful happens in these enervating tracks, yet not only is it able to maintain a vice-like grip on your body, it manages to surreptitiously rotate its screws and tighten its hold with each ominous passing second.

“Alveus De Somnus” is where the band opts for a surprisingly powerful old school death metal approach featuring fist-pumping, gun- reloading, adrenaline-rushing music somewhat similar to Bolt Thrower on their very first album to which your heart can't help but vibrate; actually, rattling with dread would be a more apt description of its reaction. Death metal influences are since diluted – normalized – but certainly not washed away, with the band having a strong and delectable Hellhammer touch in the next song. Following in the same vein and living faithfully up to its name, “Agony” is a slower song, comparable to the music of Winter if played at Thergothon's crawling pace. After the three minute mark, the music suddenly gets strangulated with bass and stumbles about in an erratic rhythm, just like the beating of your then palpitating heart. Album closer, "Rex Regis Fortuna" which is just as sullen and despair-inducing as the other songs, is interestingly evocative of Incantation's longer, doomier songs.

For those who have been unaware of Joseph's work with Rigor Sardonicus, let me tell you that his vocals are probably the most poorly enunciated ones in the genre. They sound like those coming from the bowels of an ugly, injured, and deformed monster that has forgotten the lyrics and is just mumbling inarticulately to the music. One can actually smell the rot and decay in his breathy growls which go perfectly with the kind of feel their music exudes. The raw and fuzzy yet numbingly heavy production complements the deathly listening experience.

Listening to Vallis Ex Umbra De Mortuus is like suddenly finding yourself alive in a dark maggot-infested grave with a 150kg tombstone laid on top of it. Definitely not one for the faint-hearted, it is the closest you will get to experiencing death, slow and painful, just the way you have dreaded.

April 3rd, 2007