Desolate Shrine play a form of death metal that is heavy on atmosphere and riffs. There is a distance to the music that makes it sound like its coming from another plane of existence, not quite coming from the moral realm. This is done largely through massive riffs, sparse melodies, lots of dissonance, and a mastery of pacing.
The riffs themselves tell a story. What that story is is up to the listener, but to my ears it imparts feelings of dread, death, and a profound sense of loneliness. The music does not feel human except for the small parts of the album where the band includes melody. These parts are the only moments that the band provides for my mind to grasp onto anything that would seem "normal."
The songs are long, often exceeding ten minutes in length. It's the longer songs on the album where the band is able to fully explore ideas and concepts and let them mature and morph over the course of the songs playtime.
Songs like We Dawn Anew and the title track show the band at their most diverse and also the most dissonant. It's here where the band will experiment with small bits of melody interspersed between riffs to give the listener's mind something to grasp onto. Small little glimpses of sanity in a whirlwind of chaos.
Desolate Shrine has five albums to this point, most of them are similar in execution. I don't see the need to own all of them because of this, but the ones I do own I enjoy greatly.
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