Review Summary: How do we know? How do you know?
I mean, you’ve already probably picked it. There’s going to be some metal on the front page this year. It was a trend last year, the year before that…and most certainly will become a trend this year. The detractors will complain, surely, they must…or where’s the fun in using the same descriptors over and over again? Where’s the point of explaining that this album is different from that album or that these riffs really do hit harder than that other album the same fans were hyping last week? These questions and more will go unanswered for now, even if it’s just to keep the deprecators guessing, wondering—is there a light at the end of this tunnel? No, just more death metal, like some silly merry-go-round you didn’t pay for and certainly couldn’t get off. Sucks to be you. The metal fans will continue feeding the machine and the ride will keep spinning. What
bliss. Fortunately, this death metal jaunt won’t be likened to a cutesy carnival ride. In fact, the genre as a whole is more in tune with darker settings, firmer walls or even the more sterile climes of space.
The Parasitic Chambers, a violent conjuration from Californian based Conjureth dismantle the very idealisms of modern death metal and reinstate the more technical slate of what’s clearly considered old-school among the aficionados and true believers. That is to say, if you at all like the precursor to this year’s release,
Majestic Dissolve then there is sure to be no problem in lumping the same descriptors so heavily here. These climes, more than worth the climb but the view is undoubtedly the same. Combinations of brimstone, metal and fire as far as the horizon. Flecks of green slowly lose the battle, losing ground as Conjureth’s visage takes over and resets the frame. That’s not vague; it’s apt. “Smothering Psalms” is that tumult. Winding riffs crash dissonantly over rough cavernous snare and cymbal work. The bass? It’s there, but somewhere lost in the din as it echoes around ravenous melody. Frantic. On the loose. Unbound and unrestrained. Conjureth’s brand of death metal seems as pure as the rocks from which it’s hewn. It makes sense that tracks like “Devastating Cataclysmic Unearthing” cut angular, distinct compositional lines. The track is a deep rush to the bottom of the pit, footholds untested and trusted as a climber reaches deeper and more dizzying depths. Vision limited as the walls mirror bleak shades of black, cymbals crashing up and down a granite-hard shaft. We’re clearly not on the same well-trodden paths that
Alice in Wonderland would be used to. Alice, your
chamber awaits.
The Parasitic Chambers has its shortcomings, or rather to say shortcoming, is that it often gets caught too heavily entrenched within its own motif. The experimentation and lighter dynamic variances that pepper the album’s thirty-eight-minute runtime is welcome but they don’t really test the limits of just where Conjureth
could take these vast compositional cataclysms. I can understand the sectarianism or narrow scope of calling out a band for being both experimental and not at the same time but
The Parasitic Chambers somehow fits the bill, neatly sitting on the fence of ‘not enough’ and ‘just right’.
It’s also tempting to sit here digging through each and every glistening crevasse
The Parasitic Chambers has to offer. Each
chamber has a distinct personality and yet is familiar enough for the average spelunker to get turned around. Whether it be the mosh riff leanings of ‘A Blood Romance’ or the bastard thrash, doom and death groove of ‘Deathless Sway of Torsos Calm’, Conjureth’s grasp on what makes their death metal so enticing lives in the subtle nuance and directional changes that snake throughout the record. The most prominent of these, ‘The Unworshipped II’ slows the pace into a six-minute dirge. The tempo shifts into cosmic mysticism and even the riffs flow naturally as if blossoming from the bottom of a cave somewhere. Death metal here isn’t forgotten, but I wouldn’t mind seeing exactly where the band takes this minimalistic, larger than life aesthetic. In wrapping up what is to be one of the year’s more prominent death metal releases I find value in how well executed, how well tied-in Conjureth have become bridging the sounds between their past records and where they might eventually surface. It’s unlikely that this Californian metal centerpiece will ever shoot for the stars, but here’s hoping they truly transcend the caves from which they’re born.
