. . .
Castevet bring magnificent names to mind: Voivod, Enslaved, Deathspell Omega. To varying degrees, these names represent freedom from major/minor scales, the past of Western music. They still play instruments that divide the octave into 12 segments. But they’re more adventurous about utilizing those segments, stacking them into complex shapes that defy easy interpretation. Power chords are power, minor chords are sad, major chords are happy. Well, not really, but in most musicians’ hands they are. Add colors, subtract foundations, and things get interesting. Castevet know this. Only one album old, they belong among peers like Foscor and Averse Sefira who move metal forward by pushing tonal boundaries.
If Mounds of Ash (Profound Lore, 2010) were a person, it would be tastefully dressed, yet look different from different angles. At high volumes, it melds black metal textures with rhythmic friction borne of backgrounds in hardcore and grindcore. At low volumes, the textures have a gauzy beauty. The presentation is mysterious, down to the lack of printed lyrics. Supposedly they were “too personal to print”. This is a pet peeve of mine. Why write, record, and perform lyrics without committing them to public view? The “voice as instrument” argument holds no water here, as the hoarse yells are nothing special. Also, nice artwork – but it seems like wallpaper. What does it say? I suppose I want to have my cake and eat it, too. Easy interpretation is anathema, but difficult interpretation is frustrating.
Part of that frustration is the massive potential here. Castevet have both musical power and staying power. I’ve listened to almost nothing but this record for the past few weeks. I haven’t tired of it. That’s partly because it does such a beautiful job of maintaining suspense. Songs twist and turn but avoid definite destinations. This helps maintain interest – contrast with, say, breakdown-happy deathcore, which is all destination and no journey. But this is metal, music of overcoming. It would be nice to have a big payoff, even one. The closest this record comes is “Wreathed in Smoke,” which wraps itself in gorgeous synths (or real brass?) that culminate in a haunting held high note. Such leaps in scope made Voivod, Enslaved, and Deathspell Omega magnificent. Castevet can jump that high; they should do so more.
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Amazon (CD)
The End (CD)
Relapse (CD)
Profound Lore (CD)
Amazon (MP3, $6.93)
“At high volumes, it melds black metal textures with rhythmic friction borne of backgrounds in hardcore and grindcore”
this jumps out immediately on the first track. color me interested…
very cool musically, reminds me more of noise rock than metal really. almost akin to stuff like Playing Enemy, Kiss it Goodbye, or even National Acrobat or Breather Resist, simply with a different approach to the vocals. their angular hardcore pedigree shines through. i agree completely about the album art. if they wanted to keep it vague and mysterious at least leave off the Printshop-esque swirly doo-dads. true simplicity doesn’t need ribbons and bows to dress it up. still, cool stuff here.
Yeah this may end up on the top of my year end list.
Why is it that every Hardcore/Post-Hardcore band is getting name dropped as a Metal band? Is a difference even recognized? There should be.
Does remind me of some of the last few Enslaved records… if simplified and thrown in some Coalesce sort of thing…. something I can do without. There’s potential perhaps, but as a first step how about something more than stereotypical sore throat hardcore shouts. Some actual singing might be good.
I hate paying for a CD with no lyrics inside. I mean, man, that’s the least you could do! It’s something frustrating, especially when you are spanish for example
At the end I get the lyrics but it’s hard for me to understand even some spanish growlers when they sing in my own language…it could be better with a little help, couldn’t it?
I’ll check these guys out, if you’ve been listening to them non-stop on the last few weeks they must have something, I guess.
Terrific album, this one. The hardcore touches really blindsided me. I was looking forward to this album having first heard of the band here about a year ago, but it totally exceeded my expectations.
Havent got the album yet, but better believe i will have been listening to a couple of tracks posted online for about two weeks solid now. Love some of the choices of chords and counterpoint, this is everything i hoped krallice would deliver but to these ears failed.
ah, you beat me to this Cosmo. One of my favorite records this year, and yes, those are real brass. Contributed by one of the guys from Candiria
@ The Wolf, you should either really love, or really hate my upcoming post on this record. It deals a lot with “what” this is
@ TheWolf
I understand your sentiments about the hardcore shouting/screaming style. To me, though, I don’t even think they need actual singing… even if the shouting style had some variance in it, it would help. Despite what non-metal trained ears may think, there are growling/screaming vocalists who have a much wider dynamic range than others.
I like the first track. Second one hasn’t quite hooked me yet though.
@CW Yes, I feel the same way regarding the comparison to Krallice. I feel like it’s the same harmonic approach, just in the context of much, much more interesting compositions.
Hey bands, you wanna push the boundaries of extreme music? Write lyrics. About real stuff. In life. Growl/bark if you must but don’t growl/bark because you’re sheepish about getting in front of a microphone.
Sorry that’s a displaced rant. This shit’s awesome, I had no idea. Profound Lore is currently batting a thousand.
This band would be so much better with different vocals. Their music has depth and emotion, but those fucking vocals are so monotonous and just bloody awful and don’t suit what they are doing musically. Shame, this band could be really fucking good.
Easily my favorite record of the year and likely to be in heavy rotation for a very long time. I love the production, the smart drumming, and the fantastic melodic sense. Concerning the vocals, I think that they work very well. They color the music nicely, which I think is really the point. Different vocal styles… I can’t think of anything that would really work with what they do.
The exclusion of lyrics really bummed me out and the layout could have been used to boost the production value even further. I’d love to see a rerelease/expanded edition sometime.
I think this is a great album, but I agree that the vox are on the monotonous side. I think the music would be better served by a more dynamic growler akin to Attila, Arioch/Mortuus or Mikko Aspa. Then again, some well done clean singing could really add more texture and depth also.
This band is very cool, but…kind of a strange review.
My top of the year thus far, excited to see where they go from here.
I contest that idea that pushing the limits of metal has anything to do with nonstandard harmonic approaches, which is what the legacy of Voivod is, and not atonality.
There is no pushing of tonal boundaries in any of the music cited, tonality is safe and represented through the ‘riffing’ style of song construction. If you play your fucked up phrase 8 times in a row then there you have it, a tone is dominant. It takes actual serialist or serialist-esque type of composition to achieve atonality, some Sculptured music comes to mind, also some Behold… the Arctopus. It’s not a metal trend at all, perhaps most of all because it’s difficult to compose serialist music with any degree of rigor. It’s actually very easy to throw contrasting chord voicings in a music phrase to make the end result feel more ambiguous. It’s harder to write music that directly points at an emotion, though. A commentator above wrote “Hey bands, you wanna push the boundaries of extreme music? Write lyrics. About real stuff. In life. Growl/bark if you must but don’t growl/bark because you’re sheepish about getting in front of a microphone.” That rings true for me, although basically that’s what most of the good Heavy Metal is still trying to do without attempting to be ‘extreme’ in the customary sense. And then there’s stuff that is both extreme and real, Garden Wall come to mind.
All that said, I do enjoy these Castevet songs but certainly not because they’re pushing any tonal boundaries. If anything the diminished arpeggios and minor-seconds stacks are old hat by now in black metal. I enjoy them because they’re interesting songs, we’ll see about staying power.
>”All that said, I do enjoy these Castevet songs but certainly not because they’re pushing any tonal boundaries.”
Yep.
This review is incredibly late, you live in a cave, as for the vocals? What do you want? Clichéd rasping like Ludicra & Agalloch.
Fantastic album & band, next level shit.