Sunday, December 5, 2010

Cult of Daath "Doomed By The Witch" CS


This is one of those tapes you order and forget you bought until it shows up in your mailbox. I've always felt like NWN! puts out a tremendously wide variety of musics, which I guess is inevitable when your catalog reaches a certain size and you need to be able to satisfy a wider range of audiences to keep your business afloat, and I actually really like that THEY do that, I think THEY do it well, but it is generally dangerous territory, running the risk of spreading yourself thin. Anyway, this band is of that breed of bm/death similar to Blasphemy and Axis of Advance; shiny leather, wrap sunglasses and goatees, ha ha. Not really a genre I ever got into much, but I like it from time to time, if I'm the right mood. I never really liked Axis of Advance, it just stretches "brutality" a bit thin and comes off too much like a modern grind act. Something about going so fast with the blasts and playing ultra down tuned super fast palm-tremolos just lose crushingness for me. That's why I like Cult of Daath more (but don't get me wrong, this tape is not going to see much rotation on my stereo), they keep the tempo right for a black/death band, it's not so fast it does that "wall of brutality," sound which is a concept I think has failed within itself. It is still indeed focused primarily on the concept of tremolo progressions over blast beats, separated by big slow chordal crushes, so it is still very much standard fare for its genre. I won't make any comparisons to this band and Blasphemy, because they're not in the same league and it's not fair towards either band. Actually maybe a better way to describe this band is like a slowed-down Krieg with more major chords. This tape is very cleanly recorded and I think, for this particular album, it works better that way. It has a refreshingly thin sound to it, it's not nearly as low-ended as its contemporaries, think early 90s Blasphemy sound style. There's a stupid and unnecessary acoustic interlude which should have been thrown out the window. The highlight is most def the third song which shares the name of the tape, called "Doomed by the Witch." It takes cues from Death Angel-like thrash, but implants a very noble, glorious, "on the field of battle with sword and shield against the goblins" vibe. Sadly too short, it had a refreshingly bright attitude, bright in the sense of victory when your enemies are slain. From that point on the tape shows some more thrashy influences, but not nearly as well executed. If the whole tape sounded like the third song I think this album would be something somewhat special, otherwise only for black/death maniacs.

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