Gonius Rex, The Heretic and Soul Reaper a.k.a Onirik return for their fourth album of black metal “wandering textures”. If you’re looking for life this isn’t the best place to come. Grey and drawn out structures seem to represent Onirik’s world.
Meandering guitars and faint distortions mark “Requiem for a Profane Liberation”, giving it an element of Ephel Duath in its pattern. The torturous and haunting sounds of “Invocation and Defiance” take over. My images arising out of this music are of decay and nightmares. Croaking vocals and extremely creepy choruses serve to make this as unpleasant an experience as possible, but that of course is the point. We are guided through, they tell us, “the catacombs of the mind, soul and spirit”. I cannot express it better than the publicity, which states that “Casket Dream Veneration is a trawl through the crypt, nameless and ancient, out of time eternal, heaving and breathing a medieval melancholy that gives way to utter madness”. This album is without doubt like a trip through the graveyard at night. It’s cold, devoid of air and there are sounds of moaning. The title track captures the mood with its distorted and disturbing riff line and relentless croaks and haunting vocal passages, which bind together the desolate and blackest of black metal. “Ascension and Descent” almost breathes into life but it slows down and descends into the murkiest of territory – Onirik got the title right there, but there isn’t much ascent, to be fair. It’s all like being dragged along by heavy chains.
The problem with this album is that its very nature is that it’s never going to cheer up so it’s always stuck in morbid dreariness. Instrumentally it’s tight and the production’s ok without pitching up to perfect clarity, which would adversely affect the atmosphere. “I Am Him but He’s not Me” has a preached sermon of nastiness, and the haunting ghastliness continues with “Disputant by Enlightenment” but by now we have the message.
No-one could argue that this isn’t black metal of an atmospheric kind. In fact it’s one of the bleakest albums I’ve heard for some time. “Casket Dream Enlightenment” has variations, and has some particularly interesting guitar lines in particular, but I couldn’t describe the experience of listening to the musical equivalent of stale air for forty odd minutes as enjoyable.
(6.5/10 Andrew Doherty)
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