ALBUM REVIEW: Cyclopean – Sea Bastard
Doom metal as a genre has undergone a series of countless diversions since those famous church bells announced its arrival on the opening of BLACK SABBATH‘s eponymous debut way back in 1970. There’s been funeral doom, epic doom, death doom, progressive doom. Arguably stoner rock and desert rock in all its forms can also be traced back to those ominous tolling bells. One thing that unites pretty much all doom bands though is the tempo of the music they play. It’s slow. And for many purists, the slower the better. Whereas some genres achieve their heaviness through shredding guitars, thousand-miles-an-hour riffs and neck-breaking blast-beats, doom is at its heaviest when it travels at an almost glacial speed.
Combine that pace with some of the nastiest sounding downtuned guitars you’ve ever heard and vocals that remind you of someone gargling vomit in the darkest pits of hell and you’ll arrive somewhere near Brighton’s SEA BASTARD. Formed in 2011, the group released their first two albums in quick succession before going on hiatus in 2016. Having reformed in 2021 at the request of a friend with a terminal illness, the band is finally unleashing its 3rd full-length, Cyclopean, and it’s safe to say that time away has in no way blunted their brutally heavy edge.
The howling feedback that begins opening track Dark Altar gives you some idea of the horrors that await but nothing can prepare you for the sheer filth that spews forth from your speakers when the band kicks in properly. The bass and guitars are downtuned so far that you can’t help but feel they’re actually being used to dredge the bottom of the ocean. In fact the atmosphere created across Dark Altar‘s twenty two minutes run time (yes you read that right) is so dense that you will feel like you are drowning in its impossible weight. This is about as far from easy listening as you can get but it is so hypnotic in its relentlessly crushing heaviness that you’ll struggle to break free from its appalling grasp, almost like some unfathomable creature, risen from the deep and about to destroy everything in its path. There are moments when you come up for air, when the crawling riffs of Oliver Hill ring out on their own, the rest of the band dropping out for a few bars. There is no respite here though, as you know you’re about to be dragged back under any second now. The beast is toying with you.
Cyclopean is an adjective favoured by H.P. Lovecraft in his tales of impossible beings undoing the minds of men and it’s a wonderfully appropriate title for this album, sounding as it does almost like a soundtrack to some of Lovecraft‘s most terrifying stories. Second track Entombed With The Pharoah slows things down to an even more claustrophobic pace, Hill’s skull-crushing riffs and Ian Montgomery‘s demonic vocals adding yet another nightmarish layer to the sonic hellscape created by the rumbling rhythm section of Steve Patton’s bass and George Lever’s drums. Whether creating the sense that you’ve been dragged underwater by some ancient unknown or buried under tons of stone with an awakening horror, SEA BASTARD always ensure you feel absolutely helpless under the sheer weight of their music.
There is no letting up on Prophet Of The People or the twenty four minute album closer Nameless Purgatory either. Despite only containing four tracks, there is still a lot going on here and all of it horrible in the best possible way. Like PRIMITIVE MAN, though, the sheer nastiness of this album is going to make it a challenging listen for all but the most experienced of extreme doom aficionados. For those able to embrace the madness, Cyclopean, much like the incomprehensible geometry in Lovecraft’s best stories, is almost impossible to comprehend in both its scale and sound whilst at the same time being so labyrinthian and immersive that, once you’re in, it’s pointless trying to escape it.
Rating: 8/10
Cyclopean is set for release on October 30th via Road To Masochist.
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