A sophomore full length album from this Los Angeles based death/doom crew.
I’m going to confess that I hadn’t heard of the band before, and in fact didn’t particularly “get” this album at first listen. I was listening to it on the audio set up in my front room, which is a well-lit and relatively pleasant living area with normal furnishings. I heard the discordant skronk of unsettling opener “The Azure Eye”, and as the first song proper “Shrouded in Crystals” belched out of the speakers, I reached for the volume and turned it down. Not for me, I thought.
I listened to it next in a completely different context. The last month has seen me away from home with work, living out of hotels or being in our nation’s capital. There, alone and in darkened and impersonal living quarters, listening to “Maze Envy” through headphones and minimal distraction, I “got it”. “Maze Envy” is, in essence, a cosmic-horror film of an album. This is a dizzying, if not slightly disorientating journey into places where the human mind should not go. Hugely heavy and with vocals so heavy they sound like shouts from within the void. Often, when seeing the label “death/doom” on records, I start to get a little jaded at hearing the latest My Dying Bride clone. Civerous take a different path entirely.
The best comparison I can give is the vertigo-inducing riffs and otherworldly atmosphere conjured by Steve Tucker -era Morbid Angel, mixed with the bizarre and unremittingly heavy oppression brought by prime Runemagick. There are so many twists and churns with the song-writing that I was hooked, trying to figure out what terrifying new dimension they would inflict on me next.
“Labyrinth Charm” for example, has all of the skills and attributes of a blasting death metal song, but with the abysmal tone and leaden aural blanket of Candlemass on industrial volumes of pain medication. The subtle guitar playing, located within the main maelstrom but present in the mix cause intrigue and fascination. When this band “clicks” together and brings forth the heaviness, I think pound for pound it’s the absolute heaviest thing that I’ve heard this year. At points in some songs, it even made me feel a little breathless. It might go without further saying, but this is not an album for the weak of constitution. You’re unlikely to pop this on at a party or gathering of friends for a beer-filled great time, but that would be missing the point. This is an album to savour and listen to in the right circumstances. It’s an infliction of terror upon you own psyche, after which you will emerge drained but satisfied.
“Maze Envy” is really a very accomplished piece of work. There are seven songs here, and some are instrumental or serve to break up the huge weight of the heaviness, but it still hangs together as a satisfying and complete album. I don’t know if I can say I “enjoyed” it – this is an album that’s really more of an experience than a fun time, but I can say that it’s the heaviest album of the year so far, and one of the best. Any listener of things extreme should give this a go in the right habitat with the right equipment.
(9/10 Chris Davison)
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