Having a band member from Impiety is for me a point of interest, and this is the case here. The band member in question’s time with the Singaporean extremists was in fact short-lived, and Cohol themselves have been going since 2000, so there’s undoubtedly more to them than a loose connection. This album is the Japanese band’s second full release. For the record, Cohol is an acronym for “Consume the Obsessed Hatred on the Liturgy”. No, me neither.
This album for me sounds as if it was all recorded at different times with different objectives. It suffers from a lack of continuity for this reason. I was fine with the intro “Frozen” where we’re plunged into an atmospheric and shadowy world of fluttering snow, melancholy and shimmering dreams. Knowing this is a black-death album, this was always going to change and so “Infrastructure” picks up an irregular and urgent black metal tone, interrupted only by a short post metal passage before the assault continues. The assault becomes more furious and unsympathetic on “Chaos Ruler”. There’s energy from the drum and there are copious screams but whilst I didn’t expect a la-di-da melody, I wasn’t making much sense of this. “Depressive” starts as a nightmare. The prescription is nasty stench-driven black metal without form. I was listening to pumping black metal without point or purpose. It doesn’t get any better with “Funeral March”. The guitar plays out its desultory tone, suggesting horror and it’s all chaotic, no doubt deliberately, but I felt outside of this particular party as it blazed on.
The first five tracks passed me by somewhat, but I felt an improvement in “Endless Ember”, which seemed more charged up, more focussed, more vehement and impressive in its attack. “Arche Pathogen” has fire and atmosphere and unfolds in a sinister way but it’s not extraordinary. Time is then taken out for an expanse of darkness and spoken malevolence as “The End of Acute Phase” closes proceedings down. The lofty and ethereal ending now sounded false as we had been too far away from the dizzy heights it suggests as to be meaningful.
I didn’t feel cold and isolated. I felt nothing. Even in the grainy world of black metal, I like to have some idea where I stand but listening to “Rigen” was as if I stood in an alien culture where dark things were happening, and I was a disinterested onlooker. I could not connect to this album. For me “Rigen” had neither soul nor structure.
(4.5/10 Andrew Doherty)
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