ALBUM REVIEW: Corpseflower – Cicada The Burrower

There was a time where artists wore genres like uniforms, adhering to codes and conventions that gatekeepers kept squirrelled away from the non-conforming ne’er-do-wells like a musical militia. Over time, the keys to the kingdom have been kidnapped by the non-conformists, allowing genres to flood out into the fingers of aural alchemists. In the nineties, the second wave of black metal built itself on a disturbingly dark diet of blastbeats, corpsepaint and Satanism that saw it become infamously notorious thanks to its Scandinavian counterparts. As the sands of time slip by, black metal has fluctuated fervently, embracing elements of shoegaze (DEAFHEAVEN), gospel and soul (ZEAL & ARDOR) and jazz (IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT) to create compellingly complexing offshoots that captivate as much as they confuse.

America’s avant-garde auteurs CICADA THE BURROWER, the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Cameron Davis, tap into the technical trickery that the aforementioned outliers paved the way for on her fourth album, Corpseflower. Departing deviantly from the lo-fi suffocation of the black metal worship that ran through 2017’s The Great Nothing, Corpseflower throws more curve balls than a major league pitcher, spiralling off into ambient avant-garde territories that owes as much to the creativity of contemporaries like COLDBONES as it does to the likes of DEAFHEAVEN and ALCEST. 

If you’re looking for a primer for Corpseflower, CICADA THE BURROWER provides the perfect pitch on opener Fever Room. Whilst it is by far the shortest song on the album; which spreads itself across five exploratively experimental tracks; it throws just about everything it has to offer into the mix from twiddly technical wizardry that whirls around your brain to bemusingly rough-and-ready down-to-the-bone black metal to a creepy cocktail of the two that can only be described as the sounds of Jack Torrance’s descent into madness. 

Glamour glides across a glittering spectrum of guitars that guide you over a glimmering lake; an ambient-only attack on the senses that trickles through the majesticism of jazz into the prog-metal madness of MASTODON and back. It’s a track that truly captures the sound of Davis’ experiences as a transgender woman, fluctuating between the etheral elegance and violent vulnerability of these moments. It’s a train of thought that trickles throughout the album, yet never quite hits the heights of Glamour; Psilocybin Death Spiral is as dizzyingly discomforting as a magic mushroom trip, it’s lo-fi laments lacking the oomph it’s musical muster and messages deserves whilst Where Old Crystals Grow grinds through it’s gears like a guru going through the motions, sliding between sounds like it’s not quite sure what shape it wants to take.

Corpseflower is by far CICADA THE BURROWER’s most creatively compelling album to date, that at times shines like a diamond in the rough. Unfortunately, the magic behind the meanings of these songs slips far too below the surfaces to hit home in the hearts of listeners brave enough to enter the labyrinths within.

Rating: 6/10

Corpseflower is set for release on April 23rd via Blue Bedroom Records.

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