Review by UnhinderedbyTalent for Cruciamentum - Charnel Passages (2015)

When picking my releases for the featured showcase each month I often come to settle on a particular release for no reason other than I think it is something that others should listen to and experience for themselves.  However, this month's choice was chosen for more selfish reasons in all honesty.  You see I swing easily on my rating of Charnel Passages and find it can change usually depending on which way the wind is blowing on a particular day.  This sounds perhaps a negative assessment on Cruciamentum's debut album (their only full-length in thirteen years), however it is not intended as such.  Anyway, more on my struggles with this record later but the point I wanted to emphasise early on in my review is that this is an album that I was genuinely interested to read other MA member's thoughts on by way of comparison to my own and maybe help me understand my battles with it.

There's a heap of reasons why I would be drawn to Cruciamentum.  Hell, anyone who has been paying attention to my reviews/posts can see this is right up my street.  Enough nods to Bolt Thrower to keep the British Death Metal fan in me tickled pink, coupled with atmospherics applied by what sound like the hands of Morbid Angel themselves and with the addition of lashings of Dead Congregation, Incantation and Grave Miasma to boot, Charnel Passages has my name stamped all over it.  It is important to add that I don't see this band as being guilty of worship of anyone else either (including the bands mentioned above); Charnel Passages is enough of a death metal heavyweight in its own right to be able to stand its own ground in an arena of many other similarly influenced bands.  To my ears this is not mere regurgitation of old ideas done by someone else 30 years ago, instead the four piece offer the application of influence to their own sound which remains at the core of their offering.

It is very easy to draw out influences on most death metal albums (there's only a few genuinely influential bands out there so they are bound to come up often) but I view Cruciamentum as perhaps one of the most responsible progenitors of death metal, taking time to apply their influences to their music as opposed to just pouring them all over it.  For all the Karl Willetts I hear in the vocals I also hear snippets of Portal in the guitars.  For all the Morbid Angel I hear in the sonics I also get the churn of Finnish death metal in the rumbling rhythms and riffs on those very same tracks.  Also worthy of note, Dani Ben-Haim on drums is a fucking demon - I know this already from his work on Grave Miasma, however the contribution to the pace and atmospheres here is astonishing.  Indeed, as a unit the band are tight.  The subtle yet noteworthy changes in pace are all executed well and tracks feel like they are being driven forwards by all the instruments as a cohesive force.  The mournful wail of the guitars on Dissolution of Mortal Perception is s truly hair-raising moment for me and whilst I can make no attempt to suggest that I haven't heard alike before, it is just done so well.

And here lies the conflict of the album.  Some days it is too much like other things I have heard (I listen to a lot of extreme metal in my defence) in the past and I do start to lean towards thinking this is just worship.  But then on other days I hear the quality in the musicianship and can dispel such thoughts with ease.  What I think is needed is probably a little more of a blackened edge to proceedings as this is were the majority of the Grave Miasma influences come in.  The risk here then of course is that we have another Grave Miasma record.  At the end of the day though there is nothing wrong with doing death metal well, regardless of which era/sub-genre you pick from.  Cruciamentum stay authentic to their influences, doing the reference points real justice.