Well, I guess there’s something to be said for mystery, right?
Whether intentionally or not, Norway’s Sepulcher is doing everything it can to remain obscure. There’s virtually no information available on them, no names, no history, nothing. All that’s easy to obtain is this: They’re from Fusa, Norway; they played their first first-ever show opening for fellow Fusans Inculter back in June; and Mausoleum Tapestry is their first recording. Lest it somehow spread Sepulcher’s fame far and wide, and thus destroy their signature obscurity, Mausoleum Tapestry is a limited run… of 150… cassettes.
All semi-joking snottery aside, as limiting as it is, the mystery kind of works in Sepulcher’s favor. Foremost, it forces focus solely upon the music, and that done, I find that the obscurity fits the music. It fits not because the music should be obscure, but rather because it feels like has been for ages, like some long-lost thrash metal gem from three decades ago that’s now excavated and re-presented to a world eternally searching for the overlooked diamond. Mausoleum Tapestry treads the ground between death and thrash, with a ramshackle production that adds just the right amount of blackness.
Opener “Delirious” starts out Slayer-iffic, a band playing at top speed, barely able to keep up with itself, and yet still somehow perfectly falling forward together. And that’s the theme for Mausoleum Tapestry: Up or down, fast or slow, Sepulcher keeps their metal on the edge of collapse, but it never tips over. The seven-minute “Structural Death” rollicks along, but then drops into a trudging, almost doomy middle section – and all of it is perfectly chaotic, not at all what you’d call “tight,” but yet, were it quantized and endlessly rehearsed, it couldn’t be done better. The riffs are often negligible, although never poor, but really, it’s about something greater than that…
Since Mausoleum Tapestry has no sound samples available, please accept in place of such these photos of a mausoleum and Carole King’s Tapestry. Don’t blame us — blame obscurity.
…And that’s the thing about this type of death/thrash: It’s not supposed to be orderly. It’s supposed to be, above all, energetic. And therein, Sepulcher succeeds. They excel at these roughshod thrashings, and yet there’s moments like the woozy and slightly off-kilter intro to the nearly ten-minute “The Cloaked Few,” moments that may slow the pace but not in any way lessen the attack. “The Cloaked Few” is Mausoleum Tapestry’s finest, the keystone amongst plenty of solid contenders, and it achieves its status mostly at half-speed, plodding along at a quarter-note pace, slow and steady, building into another thrash-and-bash in the second half. In the blistering drive of “Planetary Decay,” or in the absolutely raging fury of “Septenary Savage Deviltry,” there’s a raw-throated, exhausting-but-exhilarating energy that is absolutely infectious, and therein lies Sepulcher’s finest point.
All told, if Mausoleum Tapestry had been released in 1989 and only just recently re-introduced, I’d likely be hailing it now as some long-lost masterstroke, even if (and honestly, especially because) we didn’t know anything at all about the band. As it stands now, it’s a damned good death/thrash record by some young unknowns, and most importantly, it’s absolutely worth the time of anyone who appreciates a mash-up of spirited thrash and old-school death. There’s no story here — the story is no story; the story is the music; and the story is good.
Mausoleum Tapestry is truly fun, but if you’re into it, then you’d better have a tape deck, and you’d better hope that 150 other people don’t want this more than you do…
