Manifesting - Descension Through the Seven Forbidden Seals

Manifesting
Descension Through the Seven Forbidden Seals
2013 Invictus Productions
As is commonly the case these days, Minnesota's Manifesting is a disturbing duo that features Sepulcherous on drums and guitar, and Maw on guitar, bass and vocals.  I think the general concept behind both this and other bands centered around a duo is simply this... the individuals involved have little tolerance for other people as a whole, and have somehow managed to find one other similar-minded person to create music with.  Finding one dependable person to form a band with is hard enough, let alone three or four or even five or more.  Most likely, the mindset of a duo is that arguments are few and far between, and that any primadonna behavior will quickly lead to the dissolution of the band.  Seems simple and logical to me, and the advantage over being just a single-person project is that one doesn't have to do everything, and the two members can bounce ideas off of each other.  It's worked very well for Darkthrone over the years.  Not surprisingly, Manifesting are part of this new generation of death metal that some half-wit hipster has dubbed "cavern-core." Yes, we get the idea.  It sounds massively heavy, and with enough distortion to make the listener believe it  was recorded in some deep dark cave.  Granted, for some bands that may be true, but I highly doubt it.  At the most, I'd say that bands of this ilk go for very subdued lighting from a few black candles, and are in some sort of conventional recording studio.  Sorry to shatter any illusions.  And that hipster, I heard he was dragged off and flogged with a razor-lined whip made of the hides of other hipsters.  Now what makes Manifesting stand out to me at least, in comparison to other similar bands in this semi-sub-genre is that they don't go for the solely Incantation-influenced school of songwriting.  They go back to something far more primitive... possibly even more primitive than Hellhammer.  Manifesting rely on simple but effective riffs that are played repeatedly mixed in with tempo shifts, the occasional blast beat, and gutteral vocals from one of the lower circles of Hell.  Far better to listen to (I'm not sure I'd dare to say "fun") than the uber-murky sludge sound preferred by most other similar bands.  Small wonder then, that I keep spinning this ep over and over again (must have been three times while writing this) and wondering when or if we'll see a full length.  Hey, I'm a fan of bands like Grave Upheaval and Teitanblood too, but I've always preferred to be able to discern one riff from another, rather than it all sound like a churning mass.