Coma Cluster Void (USA/Germany/Canada)
Genre: Avant-garde death metal
Album: Mind Cemeteries
Release date: August 26th 2016
Record Label: Independent
Coma Cluster Void. Wierd name for sure. I was really sceptical when I heard of them for the first time. Prologue: I am, made me wonder: what's gonna happen next? And damn, I started loving this album as soon as I heard the first track titled Iron Empress. The moment the band starts playing, all hell is breaking loose! Black holes, tornados, earthquakes... you name it! Coma's guitarist, John Strieder described their sound as anti-groove. Whatever that means, I agree 100%! It’s so noisy and dissonant it makes u wanna die! All of a sudden, your ears are flooded with this sonic rampage! It seems like the whole band is one big grinding machine that’s sucking everything in its way! What I really love about this album is the production. It’s modern, but miles away from being plastic! Kinda hard to execute in this digital world. And yeah, occasional female vocals fit the music perfectly! These screams DEFY DEATH will stick in your head in no time! Drowning into Sorrow is probably the most brutal song I’ve heard in a while! That drum attack in the beginning is absolutely crushing! And right after, as if the hammering wasn’t enough, the riffs kick in! Hypnotic chord progression makes a tiny bit of calm before the storm and then the tune goes noisyyyyyyy! Path of Lies is opened by this serpentine chord. It’s like Baring Teeth guys wrote this song. And if you’re familiar with that band, you know what I mean! Natural and pinch harmonics add a whole new dimension to the madness that’s going on. It’s funny to notice how the band sounds brutal when they slow down, speed it up, you know.... they just sound damn brutal all the time! Mind Cemeteries may be called a Meshuggah worship of some sorts (which ain’t bad at all)! It’s less technical than the other tunes on the record though. These chunky riffs are absolutely lobotomic!
Interlude: I see through your pain is a dose of ambiental noise that's been put there to relax your ears a bit. Funny, eh? The Hollow Gaze is completely different from the rest of the tracks because it starts slow and sounds eerie. For a second. And all of a sudden, noisy riffs are here to steal your face again! Imagine the sound a direct meteor collision would produce. That’s the intensity of these guys’ music. Everything is meant to kill us is similar to Drowning into Sorrow. I just love the way the ride cymbals cling! And these guitars shred like the meat industry! The vocalist fits perfectly to the riffs and the atmosphere on the record! Petrified Tears is a somewhat different track with these beautiful natural harmonics, imbued with the bizzare aura of the frontman’s vocals that go from really guttural to really neat and clean, but crazy at the same time. And they get even hysterical. Gotta love them. The last track on the album, The Bitter Endings is brutal enough, even when the band starts to slow things down. Even when you see them drowning. And I almost forgot about Epilogue:
As I walk amongst the sick and the dying, the pestilence inhalers and plague devourers nod their approval at my crowned statehood. My meaning is theirs and through death we part! Through death we part! Through death we part! Through death we part!
That’s some crazy sounding female poetry! All in all, Coma Cluster Void is a band that fans of Gorguts, Nero Di Marte, Dysrhythmia, Meshuggah, Gigan, Baring Teeth, Artificial Brain, Pyrrhon, Ulcerate should check out for sure! Their sound is very genuine, and I guarantee that even if the album is 45 minutes long, you’ll get through it in no time! It’s pretty fun to listen to, and even if you are searching for flaws, you won’t find any.
Rating: 9.5