The world has got one hall of a lot bigger and the furthest we can travel is where the music takes us at the moment and this time round it’s off to Denver Colorado. If that gives you visions of mountains, country music and folk we have put some distance behind it traversing the grime and grot that underlies things there. Black Curse may well be a new band but they have within their ranks some well-known ties of the underbelly of the extreme music scene. In the ranks we have past and present members of Blood Incantation, Spectral Voice, Khemmis, Primitive Man and Nekrofilth and that should well be an appetising feast to gorge your ears on but what does this combination bring to the table? Well the answer is basically horrendous crypt trawling death metal without a single hint of anything commercial about it. However, as the journey to the depths takes hold there are some surprises along the way that this “meticulously crafted” album adds to its sound to keep it far from one dimensional.
‘Charnel Rift’ hones in with a discordant guitar riff scree followed by an absolutely obliterating drum salvo. There’s some screaming guitar work like fingers down a blackboard, thick turgid bass and horrendous echoing vocals. This is close to war metal and contains many of the tropes of the most barbaric form of music known to mankind not least the occasional reverb ridden death belch. Its bloody good too, hitting like a slap round the chops before the tempo is dragged down and the nasty doom is brought forth. Yep it’s not all about speed and decimation as we crawl into the bowels of the earth and stumble upon cadaverous mysteries below. Power and suffocation dwell here with strangulating riffs and a hellish vocal delivery that hits both high and low ranges from Gravetorn aka Eli Wendler. Crowned In (Floral) Vice surely that should be (faecal) takes us into the very sewers and coats in filth with everything pumped out to drown the unsuspecting in a shower of musical shit. This is death metal where the slime lives and infects and it is truly an unholy racket which despite primitivism is superbly rendered and flung out. From obliterating surges to cavernous movements of bowel shaking stealth this takes in many facets but there are also some surprising injections of almost psychedelic mania injected into things too as the dense patterns spiral into controlled chaos. The maddening miasma at the heart of a song such as ‘Enraptured By Decay’ would give the likes of Oranssi Pazuzu and maybe even Esoteric a run for their money in the warped head-fuckery stakes and this fits in perfectly allowing the music to breathe whilst bringing in plenty of atmosphere with it.
A couple of shorter numbers such as ‘Seared Eyes’ with whispering spellcasting vocals evilly counterpoised by low gurgles with the musical might going hell for leather prove equally effective and calamitous by design. Gibbering lunacy develops into an instrumental number with slow booming drum work and ominous tones as we enter the ‘Lifeless Sanctum’ with dread at every step of the way before the title track cuts hard and deep. The cryptic terror is well represented lyrically and madness follows this path “Staggering through life’s dark catacombs, You wade in blood, As tapeworms surface through your skull, in hunger.” Ugh, it’s far from pleasant as another blood-curdling scream pierces through the doomy sermon. The final heaving movement ‘Finality I Behold’ is a concluding seething cauldron of hate-filled and miasmic chaos, complete with a couple of well-placed clangs from the bell of hell itself. When the door is slammed shut it leaves you feeling like you have been dragged through a hedge backwards and dumped back to earth by a violent tornado. However, it’s such a damn good rush it won’t be long before you want to experience it all over again. Cracking, bone-crunching stuff!
(8.5/10 Pete Woods)
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