Review Summary: Join the Cult(ed)!!!
As 2009 comes to close, I think it’s a safe bet in saying that this year belonged to death metal. Taking a look at doom this year, you would almost wonder if it’s completely fallen off the map with its limited number of releases and a number of these being absolutely garbage. Doom was apparently not on the backburner when Culted showed up, dropping their debut
Below the Thunders of the Upper Deep on Relapse Records after only being together for two years. Even more amazing is that one-quarter of the band resides in Gothenburg, Sweden while the other three members hole-up on the Canadian prairies, never once meeting in person for the entire duration of the recording. The band met together over the internet and began sharing mutual music interests, finally deciding to record an album together after ideas were shared back and forth. The result is a solid doom record that is injected with a mixture of a few different sub-genre styles.
Below the Thunders… feels like a solid doom record; the ones that offer no instant gratification and instead come across as a monotonously crushing thud after a few preliminary listens. With Culted, you can’t help but feel this way and at the same time, you have to give them respect for their praise of early doom pioneers such as Black Sabbath and Cathedral. However, Culted do not ever step into the boundaries of plagiarism, blending their influences into a slow simmering caldron that casts a murky atmosphere around its listeners. Some of these influences that boil to the surface come in the form of black metal and industrial, more in their atmospheric deliverance and never overpowering the bands crushing doom footings. ‘Tyrant Cold’ slowly makes its appearance like an awakening sleeping giant, in a building rage, destroying everything in site with its tectonic riffs and lugging brute force while adding a dissonant black metal atmosphere that seems to make the song crawl in anguish. ‘Place of Skulls’ simply takes this doom to crushing new lows by adding in creepy guitar lines that keep the interest of this song high as opposed to just harking on two damn notes for the entire duration of the song. Album highlight ‘Gunburn’ brings to mind a Godflesh-esque industrial vibe, showcasing this nearly thirteen-minute composition into one of the most unique doom songs in existence. One general detail that should be pointed out is the use of raspy, back-alley black metal vocals. You would think that the overuse of these vocals throughout the album might hinder the quality of the songs, instead furthering the creepiness of each track.
Below the Thunders of the Upper Deep could not only rank up there with some of 09s best doom records, it could easily top the most creepy metal album of 09 as well. Relapse Records should even be mentioned here with their willingness to sign experimental metal bands that not only top speed records, but ones that can still cause cancer through agonizingly trudging music. Culted slowly punish their listeners with crushing chords and bone chilling black metal dissonance with a slight industrial vibe, showing the metal community that doom doesn’t have to be just for the doom aficionados. Pretty rad stuff for a band that has never performed in the same room before.
