Every now and again an album arrives that grabs me by the face and gives it a good hard slap. Others then proceed to sink their steel-capped, razor sharp teeth in to the succulent mortal flesh and don’t let go. And so it was with 2014’s Vigils of the Third Eye which had all the charm of a re-animated corpse intent on making your life short and not very sweet. This time round Howls of Ebb have shifted even further from the light and into darkened recesses where its progeny can breed and cavort to the band’s putrefying art. Because Howls of Ebb isn’t so much shat-out-of-hell as seeping painfully from an infected bowel and left grinning on the floor deciding which bit of you to eat first.
Indeed, if this is a continuation of the previous work it is because it is even more degenerated, ill-formed and vile. Like a veteran of the undead, honed to spread its filth but decomposing and disintegrating even more rapidly as it approaches its evil task with even more vigour. You can almost feel the bits of infested flesh flying past as the band races into The 6th Octopul’th Grin. Occasionally slowing to hover around you with demonic intent and occasionally lashing out with an excited, guttural chortle as the thing no doubt imagines tucking into a bit of bloody and undercooked steak that also happens to be a severed portion of your calf muscle.
From there on in the world of Cursus Impasse takes hold with its shimmering, discordant sounds, shambling arrangements and that ever pulsing, bass-heavy drive that is the band’s snarling signature. The loosely threaded together, ugly melodies constantly threaten to fall apart like some newly risen thing struggling to emerge into the mortal world before forming with renewed violence as if driven by some demonic force. Third track, the sinister Maat Mons’Fume, is where the album truly crosses into an even more sinister landscape of the band’s own making. The album grinds into an abstract standstill before cranking up again with The Subliminal Lock for all of those ready for a bit of bestial undead pogoing. Then proceedings plummet once again into the murky world of Howls of Ebb for the final descent into The Apocryphalic Wick.
If it’s possible, Cursus Impasse: The Pendlomic Vows is even more impenetrable than the previous album shambling along the not-so-fine line between utter madness and genius as it does. In a world where you can all too often get the feeling that you’ve heard it all before Howls of Ebb throws out yet another release that is both challenging and horribly entertaining at the same time. Buy it, hold it close to your heart and let it infect the rest of your record collection because things will never seem quite the same ever again once you’ve let this band into your life.
(8/10 Reverend Darkstanley)
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