24th February 2025

Review: “Inexorable Decay” by Exhalus

Hailing from Lohja, Finland the mysterious Exhalus claim to create miserable music with raw and repetitive song structures as their backbone and have been doing so since their inception 19 years ago. Under their collective bullet belts they have released material for the Progressive Drone Metal shelves for Patrick Bateman to collect and return with alarming regularity, completing no less than ten records between 2006 and 2014 including a split with Persistence in Mourning. After eight long years wandering the wilderness they returned in 2022 with “Failed Rituals to Ascend” and consistently describe their sound as unapologetically grimy and bleak…

The brutal screams of a beast from the black depths begin this sonic assault on the senses as “Erosion” gets underway in Blackened Death Metal style. Programmed drums crash against sinister guitars and as the sparks fly a haunting piano passage adds an eerie touch. The bass is heavy in a mix which sounds raw and unmastered with the feel of one of those early Mushroomhead demos without the quirky melodies before the simplified yet distinctively Meshuggah inspired riffs of “Vortex” takes us in a more unhinged direction. Whereas the first track was violently turbulence, the second brings out the dead with eerie, intertwining male and female clean vocals before the roars begin again, cut fading out after two and a half minutes of a very similar song structure. It’s like the pair were designed to be conjoined twins, never to be separated once birthed. Sticking to their guns and creating what could be described as a primitive and almost hypnotic soundscape, “Grinder” becomes more unsettling with quirky keys and guitars building battery acid nausea. Once again male and female clean vocals in an almost aching operatic style intertwine, the female ones dominating and sounding reminiscent of someone like Cristina Scabbia of Lacuna Coil fame. Listening to it is like being trapped in a padded room with a Straight Jacket on, there is simply no escape but fortunately the pain subsides quickly with a fade to black after three and a half minutes. Instrumental “Surrender” returns to the hypnosis with a repeating cycle of riffs and programmed drums creating an earworm that doesn’t depart once it hooks you in. It almost feels like music from a 90’s PC game like Quake with raw quality and haunting touches oozing out of every orifice. Described as a bonus track “Faded” steps away from the majority of the sound of this record stylistically. Eclectic and eccentric, this one has the Mushroomhead like keys in a loop before adding a saxophone solo which takes us into a Jazz café headspace. It’s bizarre and yet strangely fun with the vocals offering yet more melody. The issue here is that this record sounds unfinished, like a collection of ideas put together rather than the end product but it is more than enough to set your teeth on edge before listening to some of their prior works… [6.5/10]

Track Listing