Not all good things happen overnight. Or in short order. Or even in medium order. Sometimes really good things take a long time to develop and make sense to its creators. Chaos gets in the way. So does life. So do other things you have to do when, all of a sudden, you realize years have passed, and people start standing around like impatient jerks wondering if you’re ever going to finish.

It’s been 10 long years since Turkish death metal force Burial Invocation first formed, and eight years since their first EP and—trivia time!—first-ever Dark Descent offering “Rituals of the Grotesque” got so many people excited over the future this band appeared to possess. But shit happens. The band split up for a while. Other projects took precedence. Life happened. But here we are, about halfway through 2018, and we finally can lay our hands on their first full-length record “Abiogenesis,” a record that’s absolutely worth the wait. This is a fucking perplexing, punishing, pulverizing trip that makes no bones about messing around with death metal’s DNA. Yeah, at its core, this is a death record, but it’s so much more than that. The band—guitarist/vocalist Cihan Akun, guitarist Can Yakay Darbaz, bassist Ozan Yildirim, and drummer Aberrant—stretch and lay waste to expectations. They take you into outer space, through hell, into other dimensions, all over the course of this five-track offering, and when it’s done, you’ll be left wondering what the hell just happened.

“Revival” kicks off with melodic thunder, as the song trudges along, and the vocals unleash guttural toxins. The guitars cut over the top and bring a proggy sense, with the song then turning brutal and scraping while it’s blowing your mind. Soloing soars as the song gets mesmerizing, and then it unloads a heaping serving of death. Rubbery guitars emerge and confound, while things blast into space, pulverizing and mangling before coming to its end. The title track is up next, a 12:10 mammoth that lurches and stomps, with techy guitar work bringing heat lightning. The song explores from there, with the vocals arriving in sinister growls, and the song heading toward the mud. Fiery guitars get the pace going again, and then shit goes off. The band comes unglued, delivering destruction, some classic death fireworks, and then a hole is torn in time, driving you through that to the beyond.

“Vision of the Hereafter” is caked in filth as it starts, with growls accompanying the heavy sludging, and grisly playing creating disorienting disorder. The senses are diced, though we get a brief respite of calm, and then a burst brings a burly, mauling end. “Phantasmagoric Transcendence” is one of the best song titles of the year so far, and it brings slicing guitars and a pace that erupts and threatens to swallow humanity whole. The drums send shrapnel flying, splintering the world into hell, and then things manage to find a new level of craziness, as the band gets utterly savage. The guitars shred and confound, with the pace swirling and bringing madness and the final moments drawing more blood. Closer “Tenebrous Horizons” is an instrumental, one that might have been better served placed a little earlier in the record, but it’s effective nonetheless. It closes the book on this record with acoustics, cosmic sentiments, and hazy strings that warn you that this just might be alien terrain.

Burial Invocation were meant to survive, and the accomplishment that is “Abiogenesis” is an accomplishment to behold. This is one of the finest, most interesting death metal records of the year so far, and it’s been a damn good year for that sub-genre. Rejoice that we finally have a record from Burial Invocation and that it’s so ridiculously good.

For more on the band, go here: https://www.facebook.com/burialinvocation

To buy the album, go here: http://www.darkdescentrecords.com/store/

For more on the label, go here: http://www.darkdescentrecords.com/