I’ve been dwelling on this album for too long. Don’t sue me, it’s a difficult one.
Laying perfectly in the complex vortex separating experimentation and over-experimentation, creativity and ‘overdoing it’, Cadaver Synod is a curious lesson in both how to write an insanely good album – and how length often defeats creativity.
Cadaver Synod is so dense. Varying synth styles, riffs as if imbued with the Devil’s genius (Paganini), fun compositions, simple yet intelligent lyrics, anthem-worthy epics, perfectly punchy vocals, meticulously timed drums – Sylvatica does it all. Perhaps, too much of it.
Cadaver Synod does have the same problem as do many other albums, which aim to both do justice to extreme metal yet be genre-defiyingly catchy. Cadaver Synod has the length/amount of songs of your standard Marduk/Satyricon/Watain/yadda-yadda-boring-straight up-black-metal album – but with an Imperial Circus Dead Decadence flair. However, what it doesn’t do well are transitions. Virtually all pieces have the exact same perpetually air punch worthy pace – so much so that by track four, Pope Innocent VIII, I’ve already lost interest. And the sad thing is, number five, Song of the Leper is one of the catchiest pieces I’ve heard in years, and not to talk about the 70s psych rock-esque instrumentation of sixth one Scapegoat.
I swear I’ve listened to this album so many times, and it’s brilliant, and so insanely catchy all the way through. Yet, I always have a very hard time making it through the whole thing. I mean, my attention sure isn’t the best, but my diagnosis has never been ADD. What’s more likely though, is that, and this is just a teensy tiny suggestion, too much catchy makes the brain wishy-washy.
Tldr: a sexy mix of Lordi, Ghost, Wintersun, and Dissection; but listen to it in two halves – and on two different days. Possibly on two different weeks, just to be on the safe side. It’ll be like being treated with two brilliant albums – and, you know, Christmas is coming, so gift yourself the gift of loving Cadaver Synod I and Cadaver Synod II.
(7/10 The Flâneur)
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