Album Review: Phrenelith – Ashen Womb (Dark Descent Records / Me Saco Un Ojo Records)

Copenhagen’s Phrenelith emerges from the darkness once again with their third and most unholy full-length offering, ‘Ashen Womb’. Out on February 7th, 2025, via Dark Descent Records and Me Saco Un Ojo Records.

With a suffocating layer of dark atmosphere covering the entirety of this album, it’s easy to buy into the apocalyptic nature of this new Phrenelith offering. When they promise the sound of the ‘end times’, they mean it and across nine tracks, there is a definite feeling of despair.

Akin to a funeral march, one attended by all of hell’s denizens, Phrenelith pour the gloom on thickly with the horrifically heavy and dark intro track, Noemata. The drone aspects help create an uncomfortable atmosphere, ready for an explosion of grim blackened death metal that comes from Astral Larvae. It is the sound of the end, beautiful friend, so just embrace it.

Even then, the wild and furious sound of A Husk Wrung Dry will startle, especially when out of the blue, there is a flair of ambient noise. It’s the small touches that makes this track, and the album, more than just another intensely heavy listen. It’s something that also applies to Lithopaedion. A track that sees Phrenelith batter away with garish riff power and pulverising drum patterns, but with desperate sounding rhythmic twists and some of the harshest vocal growls of all.

 

 

Pretty cool, right? You’ve not heard anything until you’ve heard Nebulae, one of two album ‘epics’, if such a word can be used here. Where a cacophony of heaviness meets discordiant harmony and the sense of dark ambience is heightened to even greater levels. The other, the title track, comes at the end and is a couple of seconds short of ten minutes long. The longest track by some distance, but also one of the most elaborate and enigmatic efforts of all. A little bit of doom, a little bit of black, plenty of death, and even more horrifying atmospheric sounds, this finale has it all, and it’s as dangerous as Phrenelith gets on this album.

Let’s not forget about Stagnated Blood and the relentless hostility it portrays. Nor should we forget the grumbling and rumbling sound of Chrysopoeia. Both tracks delivering even more hefty harshness for a troubled mind. Especially as right in between them is the haunting and horrible sounding dark ambience of Sphageion.

The whole album leaves you feeling mentally violated, yet fully aware that Phrenelith were invited in. The desire to feel such darkness and let it infect the imagination is simply too much to ignore. Don’t be surprised if you come away feeling ‘changed’ by it.

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Phrenelith – Ashen Womb Track Listing:

1. Noemata
2. Astral Larvae
3. A Husk Wrung Dry
4. Lithopaedion
5. Nebulae
6. Stagnated Blood
7. Sphageion
8. Chrysopoeia
9. Ashen Womb




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Phrenelith - Ashen Womb (Dark Descent Records / Me Saco Un Ojo Records)
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