Review: Abyssal Rift – Relics of Great Ash

Review by Sandre the Giant Released: 14th August 2026 The second record from Ohio death metallers Abyssal Rift sees them joining Transcending Obscurity for the release of ‘Relics of Great Ash’, which is out now. Their 2023 debut ‘Extirpation Dirge’ was a pretty good example of the kind of Morbid death metal you’d be expecting, but ‘Relics of Great Ash’ is looking and sounding like a step up. From the moment ‘Consummate Design’ opens, there is but one mode of death metal here and that is utter devastation. Abyssal Rift are channelling the deepest, darkest moments of Cryptopsy, Suffocation and Dying Fetus, smothered in a tar like atmosphere where the maddening riffing is submerged in ruin. There are, almost to be expected with a TO release, various detours into the more desolate and dissonant corners of death metal where monsters dwell and everything feels unnatural as well, like the lurching gloom of ‘The Death of God’, or the unbridled cavernous chaos of ‘The Enlightenment’. These…