Escarion – Pillars of the Faith

Escarion

‘Pillars of the Faith’

Independent Release

Death Metal

FFO: Death, Pestilence, Massacre

Escarion are new on the death metal scene. The Aussies announced their arrival back in 2017 with the release of their debut EP ‘Pinnacle of Neglect’ which gave us a taste of what this band was about. Pushing over three years and finally Escarion are back to deliver the main meal with ‘Pillars of the Faith’, the band’s debut album.

                In a rather bold move for a death metal band’s debut album, Escarion have opted to not entirely dig into the stereotypical death metal connotations of blood, guts and necrophilia; instead, with ‘Pillars…’ the band deliver a concept album by taking a much more nuanced approach to the human condition by examining the seven deadly sins. However, this is not delivered through a religious view, instead it is something more soul searching, spiritual and philosophical that transposes this album into the higher echelons of death metal having all the appeal of Death, Pestilence and Massacre. Therefore, as expected, the musicianship here is superb; it has an excellent technicality to it which shows just how good these guys are writing memorable passages that can be seen during ‘Greed, ‘Gluttony’ and the driving finale ‘Home (Where the Heart Is)’

                It takes a lot of balls to deliver a concept album anyway, but for your debut album, a tip of the hat is needed. There isn’t anything here that hasn’t been heard before, but who cares? Escarion do it exceptionally well. Chuck Schuldiner would be proud.

Adam McCann