Reviews list for Cabinet - Claustrophobic Dysentery (2022)

In my recent curiosity pertaining to the controversial war metal genre, I started, but didn't finish, dozens of war metal albums that I would shut off in the event that I noticed an obvious flaw, usually the monotony.  I finally ended at a Lynchian journey into the very essence not only of hatred, but of darkness and despair.  It's much like a Hell album, but more appropriately for the North and the Horde rather than the Fallen.

This is a surreal exercise in atmosphere, not in conventional music.  What rhythm you may expect from this album is largely absent, which in most cases, even for the unwritten rule of it set by BBM as a whole, ends up being a flaw.  As Daniel pointed out here, war metal is often about the worship of hatred, although I find that this can be achieved through multiple forms, and thus, through a diverse album.  And so, we have a Gira-style reliance on atmosphere and sound rather than melody, one that drags you through its terrifying world with little ambient / noise surprises here and there, oftentimes flawlessly produced.  Sound effects turn into instruments and instruments turn into atmosphere, rather than just playing monotonous music.  The best example of this may be Hallway of Dacryocystotomic Depriciation.  Even immediately afterwards on the next track do we get an extraordinarily fuzzy guitar carefully raising in volume behind the foreground of a clearly produced static buzz accompanied by blowing winds, and pairing with these fuzzy death guitars are clearer and more polished post-black tremelos that somehow pair with the death fuzz flawlessly.  This all happens in the first MINUTE of Eternally Pendulemic Flourescent Bulb / Deteriorating Interminably.

Never before have I heard a metal album that is so rhythmless and so full of imagination at the same time.  This is music at some of its most reliant on presence before rhythm, and successful as well.  It took a real creative genius to achieve something like this and manage to mix clear production with fuzzy production, sadness with anger and ambiance with terror so beautifully and so disgustingly.  Easily making it somewhere in my top 10 black metal and death metal albums at the same time.