Cenotaph joined the vocabulary of extreme metalheads after showing up on the Pantalgia compilation in 1992, but was known to tape traders before then as a Mexican band with a distinct style of heavy primitive death metal that was nonetheless discursive and spirited.
This re-issue on 10″ LP includes the 1990 7″ EP Tenebrous Apparitions and the same form from 1991 with The Eternal Disgrace. These show the band during the formation of its style as it arose from the ashes of Damned Cross, its previous name, and as it refined its style during the era leading up to its formative The Gloomy Reflections of Our Hidden Sorrows.
Tracklist
Tenebrous Apparitions (1990)
1. Repulsive Odor of Descomposition (5:37)
2. Larvs of Subconscious (3:52)
The Eternal Disgrace (1991)
1. Dissection (3:55)
2. Tenebrous Apparitions (5:15)
Tags: cenotaph, death metal, mexico
God sucks…
Cuz he won’t give me taurus angel or 100 hawaiian Greek brides
Punk ass jew…
That’s why I cum here to read reviews of obscure bands that are a bit better than the rest… no asskissing… but ignoring all the other provocative crap.
So deathmetal.org/metal needs a fix, because it looks like it’s about to get flushed or something.
How does this website look like it’s about to get flushed?
The lack of ability to do daily updates since there are other things also pressing in the lives of its creators.
Nah, B… non-daily updates are completely in line with the ethos of the site. Quality, not quantity. Your dear readers hopefully aren’t driven here solely from dopamine-hit reward-seeking behaviour!
but the quality has declined as well
The internet seems very dopamine-hit centric as its culture falls out from the middle. Thanks Google!
The sheer amount of flood in the genre — ten releases a day — has been a problem since 1994 or so.
I found out over the years that metal is typically categorized into three categories: the sober, the drunk and the dickless.
–The Sober: the music is unpredictable without being pretentious, and has substance over style. Think of most of the “classics” reviewed during the dark legion days. This is the stuff that lasts when the smoke clears.
–The Drunk: aka the guilty pleasure… like rock n’ roll it’s so shamelessly bad that it’s good if the mood fits. It acts like a quick-fix for unresolved emotions, but nothing based on long-term enjoyment. I’m personally OK with this from time to time.
–The Dickless: the majority and worst of metal, characterized by such mediocrity that it neither has the balls to be The Drunk, and yet tries so hard to be The Sober by “staying true to the underground”, which means it’s just playing it safe and has nothing to say. Truly mediocrity is worse than awful because it leaves you with this irritating emptiness where you don’t know if you like the music or not.
please, give examples
Sober: Bathory
Drunk: Nifelheim
Dickless: Midnight
Sober: Stained Class
Drunk: Sin After Sin
Dickless: Killing Machines
the band nifelheim or the throne of ahaz album?
The band Nifelheim, creators of the immortal statement “Sodomizer.”
Sober: Morbid Angel
Drunk: Morbid Angel
Dickless: Morbid Angel
Sober: Morbid Angel A-C
Drunk: Morbid Angel D-F
Dickless: Morbid Angel G-I
Yeah, that’s what I said.
How do you like the newest Pharmacist?
I enjoy it and am giving it the test of time.
A good breakdown, but I might categorize it differently:
Third category seems to be more about the artist (and their intention) than the art.
Right. The only thing that separates it from the second category is the pretense and pathology of the “artists” involved.
Basically, you have art, entertainment, and the third category, entertainment that pretends to be art.
This was my formulation from 1991 or so.
For completion, there should – for the simple reason that good intentions alone don’t make good music – be a hidden category of records made by artists who are sincere, don’t make body music, yet fail anyway. They had a good idea, tried to express it, but didn’t have the competence to do so. These records are probably difficult to differentiate from those in the second or third category.
I would still file them under “Sober,” but just give them a B grade. Those are the albums that better bands pirate for riffs.
Any thoughts on “Adornment – …And love perished”? It’s one of the best forms of melodic Metal I’ve heard. I discovered it last year and have listened to it many times. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) as it was common of Finnish bands at the time, they only had a single release (most other bands only had 3 or 4 maximum, often two demos and an album), it appears that the bands either ran their course and decided to fold very quickly or they had a plan and executed it, splitting as soon as it was done. There is a lot to say about the early 90’s Finnish scene. That country has a very strange spirit.
Yeah between North From Here, Slumber of Sullen Eyes, and Ugra Karma for starters I really vibe with the Finnish stuff.
Nespithe is great of course but somehow it doesn’t draw me in quite like it used to. But it was an important album for getting me into good metal. And it’s one of those albums I’ve played for people who don’t really like metal and they’re still able to dig it at least a little. That shit is just FUNKY, like old Darkthrone is.
What do you think of Xysma?
yeah Thergothon pulled the same gag and pooped out after one album too
but what else needed to be said?
To some degree, most bands have 2-4 good albums in them and then it is time to do something entirely different. Rock, punk, metal, and jazz are hobbyist music; you are not writing classical symphonies or performing in an orchestra. You do it for awhile, spout out some ideas and some variations on technique, and then you are in the wind.
Finnish death metal is overestimated, although it had it’s own voice and identity. It’s just like anything else, only a few albums are worth listening to until the end of time.
Demilich gets attention from the horde for surface qualities but they have true death metal structure and spirit.
The “Unholy Extreme Black” demo by Helwetti was excellent, unfortunately their recently released album was mediocre.
Proportionately, it has a stronger sense of self than most scenes, although the Nordic-descended metal bands in general have this. Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, and German bands were the most idiosyncratic in a lot of ways. The Americans were a mixed bag, either amazing or horrible.