Artist: Venificus Sarcina
Title: A Flight Through Obscurity
Type: Album
Label: Digital
Venificus Sarcina, the one man project out of Ohio, have been in the blog before but with their curious and shape shifting take on black, death, 80s heavy and doom metal and they also can be a little difficult to keep up with as they have the urge to create at an admirable rate. So having missed IV earlier this year and had a one listen so far, this was nudged toward me by Sorceror Sarcina so here we are.
This one, as the cover might suggest, is farm more focussed on the old ways. ‘With Fire And Might’ is a blast of blackened heavy metal, a Frost tinged heads down track with a wonderful driving riff, shifting down gears and those reset to chug and death grunts. But still cannot resist the screaming guitar breaks. It has a real groove to it, a bass driven thump and bounce between the careering round corners riff. Yeah, this is great fun… Basically it simply rips.
‘Sickness Swarm’ vcranks up a tar pit riff straight outta Celtic Frost. That primative chug and riff flow. Vocals wilder, so much wilder but the feel is just gorgeous Frost worship down to the discordant guitar break. No criticism; this is not a clone it has that VS DNA but absolutely focussed on the wellspring of it all.
The title track carries on this monomaniacal thought; punks it up just a little too. When the vocals really kick in this is an unhinged bastard cousin of Morbid Tales. Damn but it is catchy as all hell, the groove here is unbelievable. Juggernaut springs powering the riff, spikes driven through the strange guitar sound that crops up. Honestly this is pure malicious joy to me.
‘My Endless Tragedy’ has a far more atmospheric/melodic black metal feel to it, that kind of Finnish feel for melancholic melody. Like grasping hard to another root of their sound and taking into into Sarcina places. With an eerie midsection of quiet and a glorious rise of something close to a sound not unknown to some of the Caledonian bands like Saor, just with a unique touch to the keyboards this is quite something.
‘Deep In Hell’ is a crawl through an absolute pit. A gothic touch to the spoken vocals, a doom laden sound until it rips completely free. Again the punk touch is strong here, as is the death/doom primordial swamp. At at slowest it is an angry, feral crawlspace infested with hate but never far away from the blackened punk heart.
‘Man Of thought’ has those Celtic Frost timpani drums right up front, the slow chugging riff, the gradual rise in stuttering riff tempo…. it’s like expecting it to break out into ‘Circle Of The Tyrants’ at any moment… curious but very, very well done, like a long lost cousin you meet up with by chance.
The final track is the customary cover, this time of ‘Dawn Of Meggido’ done with Venificus Sarcina’s usual aplomb; fairly straight ahead but with that lovely veer away in the vocals and the heavier punk feel.
This is probably the darkest album I’ve heard from Venificus Sarcina and absolutely well worth it. The shifts between the Celtic Frost wellspring with more doomed blackened punk of some tracks and ‘My Endless Tragedy’ work impossibly well and that groove they get is just glorious. Definitely, definitely worth checking out
Gizmo
Walking The Liminal Space 