Recent updates
- Ghost Brigade: Isolation songs (11/03/10)
- Skeletal Spectre: Tomb coven (11/03/10)
- Total Terror: Total terror (11/03/10)
- Dead Congregation: Purifying consecrated ground (10/03/10)
- Runemagick: Voyage to desolation/Dawn of the end (10/03/10)
- Death: Scream bloody gore (10/03/10)
- Intervention: Words of violence (09/03/10)
- Broken Hope: Grotesque blessings (09/03/10)
- Battalion: Underdogs (09/03/10)
- Escape From: Opetani okrucienstwem (08/03/10)
- read
Recent discussions
Devour the Domination
Not yet familiar with the bands hosted at Global Domination? Now's definitely the time to check 'em out. And what could be a better place for it than their Myspace-pages? Links below...
Reviews
The Chasm: Deathcult for eternity (the triumph)
25/09/07 || Global Domination
This review was written by ex-staffer/cocksmoker Seker.
The metal scene is absolutely clogged with shit these days. There’s way too many bands and not enough talent to go around. I don’t mean instrumental skill (Satan knows we’ve got plenty of “technical” bullshit bands formed by the douche bags that spend their whole weekend in Guitar Center showing off. widdly widdly widdly weeeeeeeeeeee!!!! Fuck off already; no one cares. Okay, fine, some people care, but they’re a bunch of douches too. It’s like a giant circle jerk of douchebaggery, with every Yngwie wannabe yanking on someone else’s penis. Unleash the fucken fury! Fuck you, modern metal scene! You’ve pissed me off so much that I turned what should have been a footnote into a multi-sentence parenthetical diatribe!); no, I’m referring to compositional skill. Songwriting, riffcraft, you know. It’s fucking dead apart from a devoted cult of good bands. The worst part is that people have gotten so used to shit metal that they can’t pick out the good stuff, and so great bands like Averse Sefira, Profanatica, Crimson Massacre, and The Chasm go unnoticed.
Which brings this review to the subject of its… uh… review. Yeah, that makes sense, right? The Chasm are a great death metal band. A great fucken death metal band. They also have a rather unique sound, particularly in the more melodic riffs on this album. Look at the first riff on the album for an example. It’s done with big open chords (as far as I can tell), and it has a very expansive sound. The multitude of notes being played at once gives a lot more texture than a simple run up and down the neck as well. A lot of this album sounds like Sepultura’s first, only it’s very technically accomplished and not as raw. I can hear a bit of an older Incantation influence too (big, sludgy, expansive riffs if you haven’t heard them), which makes sense seeing as the singer did vocals on Incantation’s “Diabolical Conquest”. The melodies here tend to be very complex. Not complex like crazy Atheist stuff (although I love that kind of thing too); they’re complex in that they have a lot of texture to them. They let riffs and chords bleed into each other to make a sort of wave of sound. Very cosmic sounding, and it goes great with the lyrics, which are mostly about the ancient Aztec culture. The production is very clear, which helps you hear all of the stuff going on, and believe me, there’s a LOT of stuff happening at once.
Well, I’m sure you’re wondering if this great record has any glaring flaws. There’s some pretty big ones. One of the most annoying is how 80s-style this sounds. Don’t get me wrong; the 80s style helps the melodies a lot, but some things should have died in ‘87 or so. Those things, of course, being cheesy solos and stupid endings. You know, the eight minute Judas Priest-style endings where everything starts crashing and the vocalist just starts yelling things as opposed to following the music. I can’t stand that shit, Also, there’s a lot of pretty annoying screaming going on, which doesn’t make a lot of sense. Daniel Corchado (the vocalist on this here piece of plastic) sounds completely different on the Cenotaph and Incantation albums; he had a great deep growl that sounded very organic and death metal-y. Here, he tries to sound like a death metal Rob Halford with all the hackneyed go-low-then-go-high-and-scream-and-laugh-and-shit stuff. It really sucks, since I know he’s a good vocalist on other albums.
Of course, as big as these flaws are, the records strengths (the complex melodies and the cosmic atmosphere) make the record worth listening too. It’s a highly unique death metal outing, and hopefully these guys will get more recognition in the future. I’d say this is one of the closest things we’ve had to a classic album in recent years, and I’d recommend it to anyone interested in unique death metal. It’s got it its downfalls, but so did Cynic’s “Focus”, and that album is still considered a classic. Don’t say I didn’t warn you about the vocals though…
8 gas giants out of 10.
- Information
- Released: 1998
- Label: Oz Productions
- Website: www.enterthedeathcult.com
- Band
- Daniel Corchado: guitars, bass, vocals
- Erick Diaz: guitars
- Antonio Leon: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Revenge Rises / Drowned in the Mournful Blood
- 02. No Mercy (Our Time Is Near)
- 03. I’m the Hateful Raven
- 04. A Portal to Nowhere
- 05. Chanelling the Bleeding over the Dream’s Remains
- 06. Possessed by Past Tragedies (Tragic Shadows)
- 07. Apocalypse
- 08. In Superior Torment…
- 09. The Triumph (Of My Loss…)