ALBUM REVIEW: …However It Still Moves – Sporae Autem Yuggoth
The Chilean death-doom act SPORAE AUTEM YUGGOTH may only have formed a few short years back, but the five-piece are already making a name for themselves with their music. Taking a lot of cues from the genre’s earliest and most ground-breaking acts, the band’s first EP, 2020’s The Plague Of The Aeons, was impressively dark, monstrous and claustrophobic, although still a little rough around the edges, especially with regards to the production. Their debut album …However It Still Moves shows a lot of marked steps forward, not just in terms of its mix, but also with regards to songwriting and style, making for a magnificent record that trims away much of the fat that was present in the EP’s sound, without losing any of its bleak and crawling core.
Apparition Of Internal Odes, with its cinematic and haunting sound, is a great start the album, building a palpable sense of tension before launching into a sombre, melodic piece of death-doom with soaring guitars, authoritative drumming and harsh vocals all creating a powerful sound as denser rhythmic elements, hazier guitar tones and atmospheric keyboards further contribute an immersive edge to proceedings. Entering its second half, the music takes a faster, fiercer turn, injecting a visceral aspect and adding more depth to the mix. The Pendulum Of Necropath, with its dirge-like guitars, spartan drums and throaty gutturals, strips away much of the melody of the preceding track, allowing the rhythms to carry the music, with a grandiose middle section allowing for a beguiling feel in amongst the classic doom that lies at this song’s heart.
Colosus Larvae: The Crimson Coffin & The Scarlet Worm reintroduces the reverb-drenched guitars that the opening track featured, with dark keyboards providing a dramatic quality alongside slick riffs. These components help to make for an imaginative sound, with the sudden lurch from ponderous sections through to urgent ones doing a lot to make this engrossing and memorable, ebbing and flowing between funereal crawls and intensity with ease. Disintegration, a significantly shorter, punchier affair than the last three, proves to be the most frenetic and energetic number on the album, with the bellicose vocals and belligerent pace pushing the music into the realms of pure death metal, in turn lending this a rabid and lively sound that immediately grabs the listener’s attention.
Disguise The Odius Spirits opts for a far different approach, shifting the focus towards ethereal, ambient minimalism, with airy guitars, shroud-like keyboards and incredibly reserved drums and bass resulting in a calmer, soothing sound that is completely unique within the wider context of this record. The weighty death-doom of the album’s first half does creep back in, but it serves to underpin these other elements, providing a bleak, monolithic contrast to these subtle flourishes, with the overall sound being cavernous and imposing as a consequence.
Enantiodromia, a brief but brilliant instrumental interlude centred upon heady keyboards, sets the listener up perfectly for Through Dominion To Interlude, which proves to be a fairly straight forward slab of death-doom with massive guitars, tight drums and impenetrable growling vocals. It relies on its muscular sound and a few eerie guitar passages, making for an impressive but slightly subdued conclusion to the album proper. The Night Ocean, another stark instrumental piece dripping with atmosphere, utilises clean guitars extremely well, and combines sublime hooks with haunting, disjointed moments thrown in to make for a climactic offering that possesses lots of emotive weight and adventurous songwriting.
For a debut album, this is incredibly solid, and although it does lean towards rhythmic doom a little too often, it isn’t without its charms. The over-arching sound combines the slick guitar work and sombre tone of early MY DYING BRIDE and PARADISE LOST, with the sort of monolithic minimalism and opaque production of SKEPTICISM and a few hints of classic CANDLEMASS for good measure, a combination of influences that works extremely well, crafting a dark, but epic, sound that’s hard not to get drawn in by. Some of these songs do have a tendency to rely on dense rhythms, and it would have been nice if the lead guitars and keyboards had got a little bit more attention when it came to the songwriting, as these elements sound great when they are given free reign and they could have elevated some of the longer offerings on here. That being said, it’s an impressive starting point and foundation on which to build, and with a few minor tweaks, SPORAE AUTEM YUGGOTH could produce some truly exceptional material with their next album.
Rating: 8/10
…However It Still Moves is out now via Personal Records.
Like SPORAE AUTEM YUGGOTH on Facebook.