Ultar: Kadath (2016)

Honestly, any time there is an album and band that makes this many references to H.P. Lovecraft is going to grab my attention.  Especially when the references are a bit more obscure than the typical Cthulhu/Azathoth/Nyarlathotep references.  So when I came across this Russian post-black metal band with an album named after the dream city home of The Ancient Ones that Randolph Carter visits on his dream quest, I figured it would be worth checking out.  Unfortunately, I was not as impressed by the album as I had hoped.

I will start with the negatives here.  The biggest problem here is the production.  It is extremely muffled.  The drums and bass are pretty high in the mix, but the guitars and vocals come across flat and lifeless.  The other issue is that the music does not really match the lyrical content.  The music does not come across as hopeless and desolate as one would expect for songs based on cosmic horror.  In fact, some of the music sounds almost hopeful and light.  I have found that the funeral doom albums by Catacombs and Tyranny have captured the atmosphere of Lovecraft most effectively.

I do not mean to imply the album is really bad.  It just does not really meet my expectations.  The music is decent enough, and the title track does actually hit the right atmosphere.  That track does revert to a lighter section, but it matches the story line, which ends on a more positive note, surprisingly enough.  There are some definite high points in the album and overall, it is decent enough.  I am not closing off the idea of checking out anything else by the band.

Aborted Fetus: Devoured Fetuses (2005)

I love slam death metal, but finding new bands to listen to is not always easy.  The biggest issue is the lack of a "slam" genre tag on the Metal Archives, or at least a very infrequently used one.  So I am often relying on word of mouth or reviews, neither of which is always accurate.  The other option is to stick to bands I am already familiar with, which brings me to Aborted Fetus.

I previously reviewed the Russian slam band's 2010 full-length Fatal Dogmatic Damage, and quite enjoyed it.  I especially enjoyed the ridiculous lyrics and song titles like "Aquarium with Dead Souls".  I came across this 2005 EP when I was searching for some other stuff and decided to take a chance on it since I did enjoy other material from the band and I am always on the lookout for more slam.

This is just a five-song EP and the last song is a cover of song by German pornogrind band Gut.  The EP was released a few years before the band released their first full-length album, and as such, is quite raw.  And that is saying something for slam.  The production is actually really impressive for the style with a nice tone on the guitars and clear instrumentation.  Of course the riffs are big and heavy.  At this point in the band's existence, the band has more in common with brutal death metal than slam.  There are moments where the band gets into a breakdown, but there is generally much more still going on than the typical slam parts.  The vocals are fairly typical for the genre though.

I enjoy this EP quite a bit, though it is maybe borderline in the slam genre.  It is highly competent brutal death metal that goes for quite a bit of extra brutality.  It's crushingly heavy and intense and absolutely sick and vile in all of the right ways. 

Caustic Vomit: Festering Odes to Deformity (2018)

I still consider going back to a subscription to Decibel Magazine.  Just to have something to read and possibly discover some new bands.  Though it is true that my tastes in metal do not always align with Decibel (man, I miss Metal Maniacs), I still like reading it.  I really enjoy the Hall of Fame selections and articles, though again, my tastes do not always align (one month that I had a subscription their pick was The Jesus Lizard which baffled me since the band was never considered close to metal).  I do check out the website fairly often these days and one of my favorite features is the Demo: Listen.  That is how I discovered Caustic Vomit.

Caustic Vomit is a Russian death/doom metal band who released their first demo in the last couple of days of 2018.  Their demo is made up of just three songs, each of which is around ten minutes in length.  Eschewing any sort of traditional song structure, each track lurches and crawls through several distinctive segments.  For the most part, the songs are slow-paced with swampy riffs and a deep sense of foreboding and a waterlogged, gurgling vocal style.  Occasionally, the band breaks into a faster-paced riff that sounds like some great primordial beast shaking itself off after arising out of a murky cesspool.  

This is an absolutely terrific slab of filthy and grimy death/doom metal from Russia, of all places.  Russian metal is typically known for pagan black metal bands, so it is nice to see a damn good extreme metal band from there.  I will be interested in hearing more from this group. 

My Favorite Metal Band from Russia

Another country without a lot of possible choices. I chose Arkona because the band is very unique: a pagan folk metal band with a female lead singer is a little unusual. Or not, maybe I am just full of shit. But the one album I have by Arkona can best be described as epic. Arkona is a band that does so many things so well that it is hard to pick out just one song. It does not help that no two songs by the band sound the same either.

NOTABLE SCENES: Russia has a pretty decent slam scene.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Abominable Putridity
Grenouer
Katalepsy