Cult of Fire -मृत्युकावीभत्सनृत्य

This Czech band's second full length is dipped  in Hindi mysticism, with the title of the album and all song titles written in Sanskrit. Live the band uses cowls rather than corpse paint. When they put away the sitars, the run full blast ahead  into the songs. Allowing guitar harmonies to get the point across rather than just relying solely  on blast mcnasty. At times the use of keyboards reminds me of Sigh , but their delivery is much less chaotic.

They bled thrash song writing sensibility, with the black metal grit. They build up into almost as epic gallops as  Swedish death metal. They hit the drone that sometimes causes the songs to bleed together with change of tempos being the only thing to differentiate the changes. The vocals stay in the same mid range rasp most of the time. The guitar playing is pretty impressive. They band blends the more ethnic sounds sounds with metal pretty well but more often than not it is to segue songs. They drop into some pretty heavy low in toward the final moments of the third song, before reverting to blast variations.

Their songwriting shines by the fourth song which goes from a chant to a well layered guitar melody, it has a transcendent nature to it not unlike where Alcest goes.They explode into blasting again by the fifth song, it has a raw  tempestuous  gallop. While they are proficient with this style if not for the keyboards airing out the bottom end it would turn into a numbed blur you have have a hundred times over.

The albums does stay fairly blast heavy in the final stretch. There is still the odd ambiance that keeps the tremolo guitar from tripping over it self while the drums speed them downhill. They let things creep out in the middle of the 6th song and then launch back in at the same terminal velocity. There is more of a majestic swing to the seventh song, as the double bass keeps a rapid rumble under it all.

They close the album out by going Tomorrow Never Knows on every thing.While I had hoped they would blend things more in a Negura Bunget manner the shoe gazey guitar on the last song works for me as well.The shoe gaze elements are original in the fact they are not post-rock in any way, more psychedelic.I'll give this album an 8 it's a cool sometimes trippy listen, I think they are capable of steering away from the conventional manner they went about this songs, but it is what it is.


https://soundcloud.com/iron-bonehead-productions/cult-of-fire