ALBUM REVIEW: Cryonic Crevasse Cult – Bog Body
It is always an exciting moment when something new gets churned out from Profound Lore Records. The latest is the debut album from the New York-based ancient cult of BOG BODY. Titled Cryonic Crevasse Cult, it features only drums and bass, an interesting choice on behalf of the mysterious duo behind the project and one that showcases the primordial, low-register sound the band are looking to disseminate.
Cryonic Crevasse Cult opens with Paralytic Pit Of Swallowed Graves, a dingy and threatening riff that is charged with thoroughly rotten bass tone. The vocal stylings are provided in a distant rasp that, if the band’s namesake could talk, would almost certainly be how it would sound. In Dregs Soar To The Skies, we find a meatier specimen. It still crawls around sludgily like some poor beast struggling against the ceaseless sucking weight of an ancient bog, but this definitely has more fight left in it, which translates into some seriously weighty bass riffs.
The Temple Of The Inevitable Flame casts off its predecessor’s dirge-like qualities and instead flies into a frothing, zealotic fervour. Well, in as much as BOG BODY’s particular brand of festering sludge will allow. Ice Stained Kurgan takes this a step further however, throwing a savage blastbeat into the primitive cauldron of murky filth that makes this album up, before retreating back into overtly sinister synths and bleak ritualistic drums. The final sample of this song, merely a male voice speaking at a low volume the words: “Some people were born just so they can be buried…” is utterly terrifying. Someone please check on the BOG BODY lads, they might not be alright…
Title track Cryonic Crevasse Cult is a barrelling charge through a pitch-black peat swamp in the dead of night. Quick, but not overly so, and draped in oppressive, paranoid atmosphere, which is not lost as the pace of the music slows to barely more than a crawl. Mystery Of The Yaghan Bones is another muddy stretch of grotesque, blood-flecked sludge that is almost as primitive as the ancient bones of its namesake.
The proud owner of the album’s shortest runtime and best song title, Frigid Shivs Slit Their Throats, is a nebulous streak of starkly ritualistic and somber threat, with howling vocals and alarming cymbals. Providing the closing welts to Cryonic Crevasse Cult, The Graveyard Of Dead Cratons is a gloomy trudge towards the distant shadow of a distant megalith. It’s a howling ordeal of relentless drum work and odious, distorted bass that conjures up a truly joyless, bleak mood, before tailing off into grim silence.
Overall, this is an album that delivers what it promises. It is performed by a band called BOG BODY, while the music essentially translates to the audible equivalent of being held down by the many hands of some local malicious druids into a soupy peat bog until you drown in it, your body left for thousands of years, where it will not even decompose. It’s a bleak concept, but it is perfectly encapsulated by this utterly bleak music. While it may only have been performed on drums and a bass guitar, it has created some stellar, if enormously joyless soundscapes that beg for a return visit while we wait with bated breath to see what is dredged up from the bog next.
Rating: 7/10
Cryonic Crevasse Cult is out now via Profound Lore Records.
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