We are all familiar with the saying: never judge a book by its cover. But when it comes to albums and bands I am rather devoted to the dictum: you never get a second a chance to make a first impression. October 2018 saw the reviews of about 30 albums on the VOICES website, you can take this as basis to extrapolate the amount of stuff being released each year. Of course having in mind that 30 albums per month is by nowhere near covering the Metal scene in general, not even the so-called underground. Additionally there are old releases waiting to be new discovered, some classic tunes that are never getting old and still rotating in my CD-player. What I am trying to say: I am confronted with bazillions of outputs and I have to make decisions. What made me curious about BURIAL INVOCATION was first and foremost the band’s name. The two words made my imagination running and with a look at the cover (created by Dan Seagrave) my eagerness to take a listen was growing. Somewhere in my mind I memorized an EP released a decade ago and therefore this must be the debut. In fact the band from Turkey released an EP plus a split-EP with ANATOMIA from Japan in 2010 respectively 2012. After a short hiatus of two years the band was reformed and once again Dark Descent Records took over the label’s part. Subtracting the short instrumental last track this output offers only four tracks, but from the first to the last minute it is never getting boring or chaotic. What makes this album so brilliant are two circumstances. Elements like playing slow, speeding up to faster up-tempo, breaks, guitar solos, double-bass and ultra deep vocals have been used by all Death Metal bands. But somehow BURIAL INVOCATION managed to find the proper mixture of all these elements. Everything is balanced to almost perfection. Secondly, Metal and all sub-genres are above all defined by the use of an electric guitar. And the riffs used are, at least for my ears, outstanding. They can be described with words like obscure, concealed, barbaric, subterranean, eclipsing cosmic horror. By the way, even it may sound self-invented, the term "Abiogenesis" goes back to the book "Art Forms of Nature" (by Ernst Haeckel, who lived from 1834 – 1919) which deals with the appearance of the first forms of life on earth and their bizarre nature. To sum it up: all in all one of the top Death Metal albums in 2018! Do not miss it and visit www.facebook.com/burialinvocation and www.darkdescentrecords.com