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CLAUSTRUM
Claustrum

Unorthodox Emanations (2023)
Rating: 9/10

When I saw the cover artwork I expected this to be another of those boggy death metal outings dripping with algae and sodden with morbidity. Thankfully, most of this album lives up to my expectations with Italy’s Claustrum serving up a swampy, heavyweight yet catchy as hell album awash with a groovy sludge.

This is a very heavy and atmospheric debut full-length release that begins with the crushing ‘Destined To Rot’ which begins with such a repulsive ooze to the point that I wanted it to continue in that vein. The pace picks up due to the thundering percussion as all the while the vocals act as a menacing, macabre drizzle. The various tempo shifts in this track are a joy to behold as the band twist with a perverse yet immense roll like rotting fatty tissue being tossed off the back of a garbage truck.

Of all the tracks on offer, ‘Destined To Rot’ is hard to match just because of its slower pace and rank atmosphere, but such dank and foreboding vapours continue with the immense ‘Zombie Rat’ which begins with a zip although soon leaks into a melancholic traipse. It’s simple yet effective pungent death metal that keeps the audience buried under layers of mucus, membrane and congealed blood for its duration.

Every track is a colossal death-doom dirge that crawls with a miserable aplomb, even with pacier segments. With the dragging dankness of ‘Desire Of Death (Nuclear Death)’, the cavernous surge of ‘Hopeless Despair’ and that foul, nauseating air of ‘Awaiting Doom’, this is an opus buried in its own sodden soil, entrenched in a stifling gloom and traipsing through its own muck. I love it.

Neil Arnold

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