In this feature we’re premiering a debut demo by Cavern, a band about whom we don’t have much info to share, which is rare. We know that one member who writes the music and performs the instrumentation is in Portugal and the vocalist is in France, and that’s all we can say. But of course we have the music.
The name of the demo, which will be released on Bandcamp through the Primitive Archive label on December 15th, is Amalgamation of Abnormalities. It includes five tracks, and of course we’ll give you our preview of the music in addition to the opportunity to hear them and form your own impressions.
No artist chooses an album title without some deliberation, though some are poorly conceived. Not so here, because Cavern‘s musical debut is indeed an amalgamation of abnormalities, a fashioning of death metal that’s an elaborate experience in supernatural horror, mental ruination, and unhinged violence, and it’s viscerally riveting from start to finish.
Its opening movement, “Black Earth Nurtures the Seeds of Perdition“, delivers a convulsion of feverishly skittering riffs and frantically swirling and screaming leads, made to seem even more delirious because of the drumming’s steady march — but the drums eventually convulse as well, battering and booming. The fretwork remains dense and crazed throughout the opening song, but the delirium begins to sound like the kind of fracturing sanity produced by extreme fear and despair.
In the vocal department the band earns its name through echoing malignant roars as deep as far subterranean hollows and as jagged as stalactites — though they do elevate into tormented screams.
It’s a spine-tingling way to begin the EP, and the next four songs keep the spinal voltage going, with upheavals of earthquaking tumult and blazing riff-violence, but they bring twists and turns as well.
“Corrupted Form Towers Above” briefly quells the mania in favor of slowly slithering and quivering tones that ooze pestilence, rot, and agony. “Time Illness” rings like dissonant corroded chimes rung by a lumbering beast growling from its guts — before it begins to charge (and wrenching yells then trade places with the gargantuan gutturals).
“Chaos Swerve” sounds like riff-pistons pumping, riff-swarms feeding, and molten riff-agonies writhing in pain, and the closer “Suppressed Dissentient Flesh” jackhammers and mauls, creates sonic grand mal seizures and blood-spraying war zones, and makes a glory out of delirium and hopelessness once again.
Throughout all these escapades the tempos change relentlessly; the drum-work continually seizes attention; the dramatic vocal variations are never less than horrifying; and the layered guitars create both intricate and primitive sensations that explore soundscapes of madness and morbidity with electrifying effects.
You might say that Cavern have drawn on the traditions of Immolation and Incantation (and more names will undoubtedly come to mind, including some of the Floridian greats), but they do have their own deranged personality.
Well, now you understand why we wanted to do this premiere based on not much more than the music itself — because the music itself is a horror-show of spectacular proportions. See for yourselves:
As noted, the Cavern demo will be released via Bandcamp on December 15th. It’s a digital-only release and available for pre-order now. We fervently wish that Cavern won’t stop here but will bring us something more in the New Year coming.
PRE-ORDER:
https://primitivearchive.bandcamp.com/album/amalgamation-of-abnormalities