It’s easier to sway minds if you can first move bodies. Cerekloth understands this, and deploys an arsenal of hugely tactile, physical riffs throughout its debut full-length In the Midst of Life We Are in Death. The Danish band offers up a glimmering, obsidian take on death metal, but just as often these songs come across like the swerving, unsettling midsection of some of black metal’s most harrowing recent horrors stretched and amplified into pure density.
The riffs tumble and pummel, but unlike so many of today’s death metal bands following in the titanic bootprints of Incantation and Immolation, the cleanness of Cerekloth’s sound and relative straightforwardness of songwriting seems designed to entice and ensnare more than bludgeon and barbarize. The band’s tremendous swagger has perhaps only been matched so far this year by the fantastic new Aosoth album, but regardless of such precedent, album opener “Praeludium” swings with more impacted groove than one has any right to have expected.
Still, it’s really “Halo of Syringes” that (aside from having one hell of a great song title) exemplifies Cerekloth’s approach to death metal: it occasionally resorts to a doom/death pace, but never allows its torpid pace to become enervating. There’s always a sense of forward motion, whether in the suspended arpeggios that decay atop jackhammer chugging or the extremely economical guitar lead lines that bring the song to its close. The meat of Cerekloth’s songs sometimes comes across like one massive breakdown, but the appeal resides in the little things, too: the chopping cymbal punishment early in “When Outcasts Become Kings,” the efficient soloing on “Within the Hollow Crown,” or the seriously nasty “Nest of Disease,” which sounds like a death-drenched Deathspell Omega outtake.
“Mesmerizing Holy Death” is the most Incantation/Cianide tune on here, but shortly after it opens it welds a creepy, spindly lead flourish atop its slothy groove, and the band’s identity is quickly reasserted. “When Outcasts Become Kings” might be the album’s best song due to the way that so many elements come together to form a singularly compelling package: the intensity of the layered vocals, the strength of a spring-tight riff, and the wonderfully eerie counterpoint of the lead/solo that bridges the song into its outro.
The album closes with a sturdy dirge that might drag were it not for the insistent pull of a plaintive, hesistantly ascending four-note arpeggio. That’s really the key to Cerekloth’s resounding success on In the Midst of Life We Are in Death: rock-solid, classy, and memorable compositions that effectively (and inevitably) nod to extreme metal’s storied past while toying with listener expectations and leading the ever-forking path some small distance farther into the dim, crepuscular future. And all in a tidy 38-minute package! This may be one of the more unassuming debuts of this still-young year, but overlook it at your own mortal peril. All mighty queens and kings were children once, but no less mighty for it.
