(written by Islander)
The song you’re about to hear from the Romanian band Cursed Cemetery is a mysterious and often deeply disturbing trek of nearly 11 minutes. At times it creates chilling spells, at others it shakes the ground and fractures the rafters. It builds searing crescendos of pain and soundscapes of vast catastrophe. From start to finish, even when viscerally muscular in its power, it sounds thoroughly unearthly, like a nightmare, or a guided tour through terrors of an underworld (or a ravaged inner world) made real.
The song, named “Yanja“, is one of four long tracks on the band’s new album Magma Transmigration, which will be released by the Dusktone label later this month. It’s accompanied by a video whose harrowing and hallucinatory imagery suits the music extremely well, enhancing the riveting but disturbing impacts of the audio experience.
“Yanja” begins with a whining, undulating, unsettling drone, peppered with eerie ringing tones. ghastly roars, and grisly growls. Over the opening two minutes it succeeds in putting a listener’s nerves on edge, waiting for some dangerous peril to emerge.
And emerge it does, with ritualistic pounding and cold throbbing chords that crackle with insidious electricity. Those ringing tones begin to feverishly shiver, the drums rumble, and the frightening vocals come to the forefront, hideously gnawing, screaming, and wailing the words, with no vestiges of sanity surviving.
In that new phase the music will get heads moving, but it changes again, becoming more expansive and searing in the upper reaches of the range. Somehow, the wails and screams of the vocals sound even more tortured and deranged than before.
The band turn their energies to moving listeners’ muscles again, rocking the rhythms, throbbing the bones, and vigorously slashing with the riffage. Yet the cataclysmic aspects of the song also re-emerge, and shift into a massive (and massively distorted) stalking stomp. Agony still burns in the madness of the vocals and in shrill quivering sensations, as if pain is now all, elevating and becoming glorious.
Magma Transmigration is the fifth album by this mysterious Romanian band. As Dusktone portrays, “the trio decides to explore spiritualism, darkness and oriental mysticism through the means of doom metal with a black metal approach in vocals (very often dissonant and experimental)…. Four long compositions made of different segments will guide you through an inner voyage musically balanced between funeral doom, psychedelia and extreme music.”
Dusktone will release Magma Transmigration on October 18th, on digipack CD and digital formats. They recommend it for fans of Esoteric, Thergothon, Convocation, and Abruptum. For more info, and to find pre-orders when they become available, check the links below.
DUSKTONE:
https://www.dusktone.it
https://www.dusktone.org
https://dusktone.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/dusktone
https://www.instagram.com/dusktone
CURSED CEMETERY:
https://cursedcemetery.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100067334137278