UMUR "Towards the Megalith" is the debut full-length studio album by US death metal act Disma. The album was released through Profound Lore Records in July 2011.

The music on the album is murky and dark death metal with completely unintelligible growling vocals. I´m thinking Incantation almost imidiately, but Disma are not a clone. They are not necessarily the most original sounding acts either though and "Towards the Megalith" reeks old school death metal aestethics. They do it in a convincing fashion and fans of the genre will probably find much to like here.

"Towards the Megalith" is overall a good release even though I find the vocals slightly monotone after a while and there´s not much variation between tracks either, but that´s not unusual for death metal in this style. A 3 - 3.5 star (65%) rating is deserved.

Phonebook Eater 6/10

“Towards The Megalith” has an amazing, angry sound, without there being songs.

Disma are an American Death Metal band that have been recognized for this debut album “Towards the Megalith”, mostly because of the distinct growl of the singer, who gave Death Metal fans many chills. Despite liking his voice a lot, I’m not that into the music in this album, even though I do recognize the immense talent this band has as far as the single musicians are concerned.

The reason why this band’s singer has been praised is because his growl is, in one word, scary. It is extremely guttural, deep, and it truly sounds like a enormous, fierce monster from a remote dungeon that has just been awakened. It’s basically like it was constantly growling “who dares wake me up from my sleep?”. The music is extremely dirty, no melodies whatsoever, just pure rage and evil. There are also several time changes during a song, which is very impressive to hear for such a band. The length of these tracks are as a consequence longer than an average metal song. Not only the vocals but also the music has a slow, dark, and sludgy tone, as if they were the score of the monster getting out of his cave. This album in particular has been labeled also Death Doom Metal because of the slowness of the music.

My problem with this album is not at all about the music, but it’s more about the songs themselves: none of them have moments that I care for, none that stand out. All of them, honestly, sound pretty much the same; some people like that, because it gives more consistency to the album, but it’s more of a negative type of consistency, as instead of being a lot of great tracks it’s a lot of non-memorable tracks all squished in forty five minutes.

A decent Death Metal album, but with a great sound. I’m sure this band will come back with a better album than this, with a more mature sound. However, I’m also sure enthusiasts of the Death Metal genre would love this, just because of the sound this band delivers.

adg211288 Towards the Megalith is the debut album from US death metal act Disma. It was released in 2011 and features eight tracks of doom influenced death metal (but I wouldn’t call it actual death/doom by a long shot), and is presented in an old school vein that makes the album sound incredibly evil. There is no better way to describe the sort of sound that Disma is dishing up here. It’s just pure unadulterated evil.

This is however the sort of album that once you know what to expect you won’t find any surprises as it goes on. Each track is presented in the similar vein of none too polished production, doom tinged death metal riffs and an incredibly powerful growl. Disma has a good death metal sound though, so this is okay, but it is worth noting that the release does get a little samey, although there are plenty of great riffs on offer that more than makes up for it. Towards the Megalith is clearly an album aimed at a certain type of death metal fan is this respect, and I think that it does a good enough job, but I’d like a bit more identity between the tracks at the end of the day.

This does also mean that it’s a struggle to find the words to form of review of this album. The album is a solid enough listening experience but describing one track is like describing them all. There are no surprises to be found within it after you’ve had the opening track Chaos Apparition in other words. That is ultimately why I’m going to keep this review relatively short and say that this is a good album, but it could be better. Fans of the more evil sounding death metal (as opposed to say more polished death metal sounds as much modern death metal is) should find something to like here. For the rest of us though Disma has a fair bit of a way to go yet. Still for a debut album this really isn’t bad at all, and shows the group’s clear potential. Most certainly an act to be keeping an eye on.

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven, scored at 6.6/10, "Pretty Good, but Could be Better")