Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Cadaveric Fumes - Dimensions Obscure (2016)

If you're into death metal that sounds maybe just a little bit otherworldly, then I think you're going to enjoy this short, but pretty promising release. We at The Grim Tower are no strangers to France's  Cadaveric Fumes and their interestingly grimy blend of cave-dwelling doom/death stuff, but this time the band have decided to maybe take things in a new, more atmospheric direction which I can only praise, especially after having listened to the entirety of this release and in particular, the final cut on the disc; “Where Darkness Reigns Pristine.” Such a piece literally stretches out to nearly fifteen minutes in length, where it observes a great deal of composition including that of some riff obscurities that are way out of character for these guys. It's also a little bit more melodic and rockin' (has some classic rock solos) than we might expect as well. There's still plenty of chunky death metal here, but we get so much more than that and I really hope they'll work on exploring this territory further. “Crepuscular Journey” and “Extatic Extirpation” are pretty much common-fare for the act, despite some segues in the form of what you'll hear on this finale, but the true meat of the record is this track, which in my opinion should have been the EP's title. Shit, maybe they should just take “When Darkness Reigns Pristine” and put it on the new record as the album's title. That would work for me, it's definitely one of the strongest cuts I've ever heard from them or any band similar. Which says a lot. If they'd just given me this cut by itself, I'd have given it a near-perfect score right out of the box. But you know, there are two other tracks here which sort of feel like appetizers and don't really accomplish anything new – at least compared to the aforementioned. Still, there's enough of a meal in the closer for the disc to retain such a high score. I'm not sure what kind of band Cadaveric Fumes are becoming, but I'm all for them crawling out of the whole Cavern Death Metal thing. More of this, please!

(3 Tracks, 25:00)

9/10

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