vote
8.0
- Bands:
CURSED CEMETERY - Duration: 00:53:42
- Available from: 10/18/2024
- Label:
-
Dusktone
The reviewer's greatest satisfaction lies in discovering, from time to time, passionate bands capable of offering good music, regardless of whether the style is innovative or harks back to the sounds of a few decades earlier; from this point of view, few things compete with the sensation you get when you turn towards the stereo with an amazed look while trying to understand (or simply fully enjoy) the wonder coming out of the speakers at that moment.
The Romanians Cursed Cemetery, for example, are a dark reality par excellence: born in 1997 under the guidance of Fulmineos (formerly in Negura Bunget, now multi-instrumentalist of compatriots Argus Megere), the team has established itself as a trio over time, with M II (bass) and Daniel Neagoe-Khrudd, the latter in the unusual role of singer and drummer.
Despite a discography consisting of four albums and a couple of EPs, in most cases available from their Bandcamp page, the three proudly remain a carbonaro cult for those who frequent music platforms, where their visibility amounts to around twenty monthly listeners . In this context, the previous “A Forgotten Epitaph” had certainly not helped in making proselytes, thanks to a lethal combination of love for noisy recording and musical attitude not inclined to compromise (we recommend listening to the eighteen minutes of the initial “Daimon ”, for example).
Announced from these premises, the new “Magma Transmigration” is published under the aegis of Dusktone, and confirms Cursed Cemetery's destiny to become an erotic dream (probably forbidden, there is no news of their live activity) of festival patrons doom themed like the Haunting The Castle, and the potential of the trio, capable of covering the distances between one extreme emotion and another with due slowness, from the blackest desperation exhaled from the first part of the suite that gives the title to album with its inspirational funeral, up to the suffocating slime sludge that plays waterboarding with the unfortunate listener in “Yaina”, before treacherously hitting him with sudden post-metal accelerations.
Far from being a monothematic work, therefore, the album shows uncommon traits that make it absolutely worthy of attention, such as the presence of a bassist who occasionally goes off on an unusual rock'n'roll tangent (the second part of the title track, where the leaden atmosphere is broken by an effective stoner fugue), the careful use of the voices, now coarse (reminiscent of Psychonaut 4, in the writer's opinion) now surprisingly harmonious or the ability to create moments full of grooves that do not forget, in any case, the black metal origins (“Tad Ekan”).
Given that we will hardly be able to listen to the album on piped music somewhere, “Magma Transmigration” is to be warmly recommended to fans of bands like Esoteric (from which the trio borrows the ability to insert melodic fragments within a deeply dramatic mood). as well as to curious or newbies to the genre, on which the closing suite (“Edva”, fifteen minutes divided between a ritual that brings Cursed Cemetery closer to our Nibiru and a post-metal march that would not have displeased Cult Of Luna at all ) could exert a sinister allure.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM