voila_la_scorie
Chthe'ilist. I can spell it. I am not so certain I can pronounce it. But I recognize it as something H.P. Lovecraft would have dreamed up - or nightmared up. I first saw the name on a Kerrang list of Canadian bands I needed to know now. Then they showed up on Hellbound's web site among the ten best Canadian albums of 2016. Then again, I saw the band reviewed on Angry Metal Guy. When I checked them out on BandCamp, the comments left below sung praises.
Chthe'ilist are a death metal band from Quebec who have fashioned their sound after some of Finland's best: Demilich, Crematory, Abhorrence, and early Xysma. Their BandCamp page also name checks influences from Pestilence, Nocturnus, and Ripping Corpse. So we are quite nicely set up here. The band formed in 2010, but has only released a short ep and one full-length - this one - which many people were calling the best death metal album of 2016. And when I say many, I mean at least five or six.
The music is very dense, resembling the artwork of the album cover. The drums are what you would expect from a death metal band and so is the guitar, though I like this particular style of playing where these almost spring-like open strings bound in after rapid bursts of tremolo picking and blast beats. The lead guitar can be rather melodic but it's also unpredictable. These songs have no usual place for a guitar solo so the lead breaks are surprises.
One interesting thing is that as the album plays on, some slap bass begins making itself more prominent. A lot of tech death bands from Quebec go the fretless bass way, so here with slap bass we get something different.
I love the overall atmosphere of the album. But I'll confess that it was the vocals that were the selling point for me. The main vocals are delivered in ultra-deep death growl style, similar to those of Demilich. But there's a second voice that comes in from time to time that I can best describe as sounding like they come from a human-sized raven, or possibly a pterodactyl. It's this dry cackling growl and it sounds so inhuman that I love it. As I listened to this album and stood in the supermarket today, I felt as though roots would grow up from the abyss below, wrangle through the soles of my feet, burrow into my veins, and siphon my soul out, sucking it down into some cavernous, dank expanse where hideous beastly things dwell and feast on pillaged human souls.
There are also some interesting ambient sound parts of two tracks that reminds me of something Nile has done on some of their albums. In particular, the sounds at the end of "Into the Vaults of Ingurgitating Obscurity" (now there's a fun song title!) create an image in my head of some pterodactyl-like creature of Hades and some other disgustingly large, bloated beast gorging themselves contentedly on what I image to me human limbs. There's this crunching and snapping of bone noise and a wet fleshy noise and that raven voice happily crushing flesh-encased skeletons while deep grunts and snorts attest to the presence of its grotesque companion.
There is just something about this album that really appeals to me. I have to agree with all those people on BandCamp and the folks at Kerrang that Chthe'ilist is a treat to hear. That is if you're comfortable with listening to the end of the world coming from the denizens of some Lovecraftian Inferno being unleashed upon our world.