(We welcome Wil Cifer to NCS with this review of the debut album by Unfathomed of Abyss of San Antonio, Texas.)

Like everything else in Texas, Kevin Price thinks big, so he employed Kevin Talley of Dying Fetus / Daath fame to provide the drums. Price forsakes the organic approach taken by the flux of American Black metal bands to weave his own path. This path is filled with discordant geometry and angular atmosphere.

Opening with the 14-minute, piano-inflected “To Unequal the Balance of the Cosmos”, the album has an oddly uncertain beginning. While Kevin Talley is certainly not shabby as a drummer, he is not a black metal drummer and a drummer more versed in the genre would know where to throw in the appropriate blast beats to create the desired sound. Nevertheless, Talley does more than dial it in, adding a few creative accents of his own. Continue reading »