{"id":41697,"date":"2025-09-03T21:36:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T21:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/41697\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T21:36:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T21:36:08","slug":"proscription-desolate-divine-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/41697\/","title":{"rendered":"Proscription – Desolate Divine Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Last we met Finland\u2019s Proscription<\/strong>, an overwhelming amount of promise was almost as intense as their blackened death attack. While rerecorded songs from their 2017 demo such as \u201cI, the Burning Son\u201d and \u201cBlessed Feast of Black Seth\u201d singlehandedly tamed the experience with jarring simplicity and excessive repetition killing momentum, tracks like \u201cConduit\u201d and \u201cTo Reveal the Word Without Words\u201d were elite blackened death. The promise was insane, causing a bigger stir in the underground than the music itself. While Conduit was solid<\/a>, Desolate Divine promises even bigger and better \u2013 and delivers.<\/p>\n

Proscription<\/strong> in a way, feels like a blackened death metal underdog story. The band\u2019s constituents are assembled from the fringes of Finnish black\/death, most prominent likely being formidable vocalist\/guitarist Christbutcher of Maveth<\/strong>, Cryptborn<\/strong><\/a>, and Excommunion<\/strong> fame, although caliber from Brutal Torment<\/strong>, Tramalizer<\/strong>, and Ominous<\/strong> offer their relentless services. This background in more brutal stylistic tendencies pairs neatly with the mountain of sound that Proscription<\/strong> offers. Unlike its predecessor, which dwelt in hints of insanity and riffy mid-tempo crunch, Desolate Divine is a streamlined and no-holds-barred brutalizer of an album, bordering on war metal. Paired with a uniquely blackened death obscurity that appears in haunting leads and hints of atmosphere, Proscription<\/strong> offers a winning formula that is slightly held back by its brickwalled production but ultimately improves upon its predecessor in every way.<\/p>\n

Desolate Divine by Proscription<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

If it\u2019s intensity you want, Proscription<\/strong> has it in droves. Haunting leads and blackened tremolo are often the only tether to sanity, their only sense of tangible in their blasting of Behemoth<\/strong>-through-the-war-metal-machine. Bottom-heavy beatdowns are aplenty, with an old school riffy death metal template a la Morbid Angel<\/strong> or Bolt Thrower<\/strong> with the insanity of blastbeats and panicked rhythms (\u201cBleed the Whore Again,\u201d \u201cBehold a Phosphorescent Dawn\u201d), while overlapping leads, flaying technicality, and wild solos cut through tremolos both down-tuned and blackened (\u201cGleam of the Morning Star,\u201d \u201cEntreaty of the Very End\u201d). Centerpiece \u201cThe Midnight God\u201d (a previously released track in a 2023 split with Sulphurous<\/strong>) and closer \u201cThe Great Deceiver\u201d (also from a previously released 2023 demo) offer nearly perfect overlapping of relentless beatdown, blackened grime, and riff \u2013 both expertly placed throughout the album. It\u2019s refreshing that previously released material is a highlight rather than a hitch.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Desolate Divine is a bit of a tale of two halves. Proscription<\/strong> goes off the rails in the first half, forsaking every act of subtlety for sheer violence, while the second half is a much more ominous affair. Don\u2019t get me wrong, these tracks will rip you a new one, but at their core is a much more plodding and stable approach, focusing on an almost marching rhythm throughout, making their more obscure and haunting qualities that much more impactful and downright epic when the technical insanity and rhythmic heft collide (\u201cHeave Ho Ye Igneous Leviathan,\u201d title track). Even synth makes appearances in haunting, spacious overtones in this second act (\u201cBehold a Phosphorescent Dawn,\u201d \u201cNot But Dust\u201d), capitalizing on the more haunting attack.<\/p>\n

Desolate Divine is dense and unforgiving and certainly imperfect. The brickwalled production and the jarringly start-stop songwriting (not uncommon for other acts like Belphegor<\/strong> or Adversarial<\/strong>) make it difficult to uncover the treasures amid the muck; the central melody of \u201cBehold a Phosphorescent Dawn\u201d sounds too much like Inspector Gadget, and ambient interlude \u201cNot But Dust\u201d feels out of place. However, it\u2019s a step up from Conduit in that its previously released material is a highlight, and there are no bad songs aboard this uncompromising album. It seamlessly blends deathened viscera and blackened flaying in ways that few else can, with stunning brand-setting performances across the board from largely unrecognized Finnish black\/death veterans. The potential on Desolate Divine is almost as suffocating as the blackened death metal Proscription<\/strong> wields.<\/p>\n

Rating:<\/strong> 3.5\/5.0
DR:<\/strong> 4 | Format Reviewed:<\/strong> 320 kb\/s mp3
Label:<\/strong> Dark Descent Records<\/a>
Websites:<\/strong> proscription.bandcamp.com<\/a> | facebook.com\/proscriptionhorde<\/a>
Releases Worldwide:<\/strong> August 29th, 2025<\/p>\n

\n\tGive in to Your Anger:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last we met Finland\u2019s Proscription, an overwhelming amount of promise was almost as intense as their blackened death…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264],"tags":[1135,12054,31577,7278,31578,31579,7740,12055,31580,31581,31582,31583,7281,31584,18,117,31585,31586,19,17,31587,24680,337,31588,31589,1142,1143,31590,31591],"class_list":{"0":"post-41697","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-1135","9":"tag-3-5","10":"tag-adversarial","11":"tag-aug25","12":"tag-behemoth","13":"tag-belphegor","14":"tag-black-metal","15":"tag-blackened-death-metal","16":"tag-bolt-thrower","17":"tag-brutal-torment","18":"tag-cryptborn","19":"tag-dark-descent-records","20":"tag-death-metal","21":"tag-desolate-divine","22":"tag-eire","23":"tag-entertainment","24":"tag-excommunion","25":"tag-finnish-metal","26":"tag-ie","27":"tag-ireland","28":"tag-maveth","29":"tag-morbid-angel","30":"tag-music","31":"tag-ominous","32":"tag-proscription","33":"tag-review","34":"tag-reviews","35":"tag-sulphurous","36":"tag-tramalizer"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}