Pernicion – Seek What They Sought Review

Innovation is intrinsic to all living creatures and necessary for survival, and stagnation means death—the death of thought, invention and viability.

Without evolution, we’d still be using a sharp stone to carve our knickers from fresh kills.

Spin it from any available angle, it all boils down to one simple truth: sentient beings need and love progression, and that includes matters dealing with heavy metal.

But not today. Today we keep primitivism close to our hearts. Today we honor recidivism. Today we revel in rot and remember the days when “death metal innovation” resulted in something that sounded like a soundtrack to a lich sorcerer conjuring a fiend to stand between your party and a dungeon exit, and that fiend had a thorny mouth the size of a GD Volkswagen Beetle and dealt 4d6 damage every round just from smell alone. Death metal born from dismal bogs, deadly fogs and crawling from beneath decayed logs. No infusion of black metal, crust or post-whatever, and positively zero jazz hands. Death metal kindred to Seek What They Sought, basically. Which, if I may be so bold to forewarn, is a title whose instruction will likely result in a person wishing they’d left the seeking to some other poor schlub, based purely on what’s belching from the speakers and that album cover. We’ve all seen Evil Dead, right? Never seek what they sought when it involves spooky rooms and verboten symbols. Peek at what they sought from the comfort of your own couch, homies.

Pernicion is a brand new crew-of-two comprised of vocalist Dan Benton and multi-instrumentalist Anil Carrier (this is his TENTH active band, but he’s best known as the drummer for Binah and as a live pummeler for Anaal Nathrakh), and this relatively brief 27.5-minute peek into the past conjures visions of 90s east coast eeeeevil death metal in the spirit of the earliest interpretations of Incantation, Immolation and, to a lesser extent, Baphomet. Gruesome, sinister death metal that’s fairly slow-to-“whoa, this is suddenly rather brisk” and with sewer vocals that sound as if they’re falling from the mouth of a corpse that wouldn’t lift a finger to swat a coffin fly.

Every song is purposely straightforward—there are precisely zero solos, no ancillary decorations, and the vocals never once show signs of becoming either more or less wretched. Perhaps that sounds monotonous to some, and maybe it is, but each cut eventually throws down a beautifully filthy, sawing riff breakout similar to what’s heard around 0:55 in “The Darkness Comes” above that gives the listener something extra to hang their hat on. And contrary to most everything I’ve said up to this point, there is a touch of modern flare attached to the notably dissonant guitar effect that colors all the corners here, and the production is contemporary and does a wonderful job of highlighting Carrier’s superb drumming.

Is Seek What They Sought destined to be the last thing you request to hear as you lay dying on your deathbed? Of course not—save that for Mental Funeral. But if you like it rotten, evil and to the point, Pernicion is primed and ready to facilitate and further putrefy the discerning death metal addict’s craving for grim and grisly fun.