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Rating: 9.8 Release Date: 2006 Record Label: Moribund Records Track list:
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Catacombs - In The Depths Of R'Lyeh This album is so massive that I feel like I'm doing it an injustice by not typing this review in all-caps, in a huge font. Catacombs is the new project by John Del Russi, formerly of Hierophant. I'm not at all familiar with Hierophant, so I don't really have a reference point for this, but that's pretty irrelevant, since this is a monolithic release in more ways than one. I've never used the term 'pants-shittingly heavy' to describe any music, but I guess there's a first time for everything. Catacombs is extreme doom metal in the tradition of bands like Australia's diSEMBOWELMENT, Finland's Skepticism and the U.S.' Evoken. The object of bands like these isn't to wow anyone with technical prowess or make people bang their heads. These guys [or rather, this guy] is out to simply slowly crush the listener with oppressively heavy melodies played at a pace that makes Black Sabbath's eponymous song seem like Terrorizer by comparison. There's some room for variety within this genre, to be sure. Many bands use their doom to create an atmosphere of soul-crushing sadness and despair; others are out to send the listener into a mind-numbing trance; Catacombs uses it to just flat-out terrify. The lyrical theme of In The Depths Of R'Lyeh can be figured out just by looking at the album title and artwork - it's all related to H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. And quite frankly, while countless metal bands have drawn inspiration for their lyrics and imagery from the very same text, none before this have captured the feeling of sheer terror and impending calamity that Lovecraft conveyed with his writing quite so perfectly. The musical approach of Catacombs should be familiar to anyone who's had experience with the funeral doom genre before. The 'riffing' here is a continuous pulse of simple high-octave note sequences, harmonized over a morbidly bloated low-end foundation, with drums played at a rate that allows the drummer to make adjustments to his kit without missing a beat. Fundamentally, it's not dissimilar to fellow New Jerseyites Evoken, though significantly slower, on average, than even that band's version of the style. One notable difference between Catacombs and the majority of their peers is the absence of synths from the record, which makes it all the more remarkable how convincing the atmosphere of dread on this record is. The production job is masterful, giving each instrument plenty of room for echo and reverb, including Del Russi's terrifying guttural vocals, which are reminiscent of Renato Gallina's on diSEMBOWELMENT's trail-blazing Transcendence Into The Peripheral album - immersive and menacing. In short, there are only so many words one can use to describe an album such as this. It has an almost cinematic quality to it, playing out like a brilliant soundtrack to an equally brilliant fantasy-horror film. It has such a convincing vibe that it stands out even in a genre known for its atmospherics above all else. It's repetitious and requires an above-average attention span to truly appreciate, like any extreme doom album, but unlike a lot of doom [I'm looking at you, O'Malley], it's also very cleverly put together and speaks to a level of sophistication that's most metal bands can't even approach. No doom fan should be without this album. March 18th, 2006 |
    
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