In the Maze of Kadath

This was one of the first death metal bands I ever listened to, and it was like a revelation for me; it was a period in my life when I was strongly interested in occultism, witchcraft and so on, and I was also exploring the darker side of metal. I found this 7"EP and got stuck by the cover artwork: it shows Cthulhu himself coming out of the ocean at night, his deep sunken eyes shining in evilness. Then, the music did the rest.

The EP starts with a keyboard intro, "Enter the Castle of Great Entities". It sounds quite creepy and gloomy, with these synths like shivering voices flowing around the piano. It's seemingly like being in that castle, with all those Great Entities floating around and lurking in the shadows. After that, in the two following tracks, the band displays all its musical abilities: what we have here is a group of talented classical musicians playing death metal in a technical way, although not technical death metal as we know it nowadays. They're not ultra-fast nor do they play 1000 different super-complex riffs per song (so, they're not Gorod, Origin or Immolation), but they are truly skilled though. Though mostly mid-paced, the band have some tempo changes and a nice, quite classical and varied drum work; it reminds me of some 70's rock drummers, pretty powerful, energetic and dynamic. The shivering keyboards give some dark atmosphere and little hints of melody here and there, and guitars sound powerful, fitting the obscure ambiance of the music, yet I find some classical approach in the riffing and the slightly melodic solos. Bass presence is almost unnoticeable, although there're little short passages where bass is clearly heard, sounding quite bizarre. An interesting thing I find in this band, is their vocalist. I don't know any old-school band (and hardly a modern one) with such a brutal voice. James' unnatural deep voice could be comparable to a mix between a dog's barking and a roe deer's bellow, but he's quite understandable yet. The only flaw I see here is the short length, as long as it's a 7"EP and it only lasts about 12 minutes.

Lyrically, they talk about Cthulhu's Myths, Yog Sothoth and other dark Lovecraft's stories, and I think it's the perfect background for this kind of music. After all, I found these lyrics quite interesting, even though I'm not such a Lovecraft adept.

Some time ago I found this band anywhere labelled as brutal death metal, and I arguably thought it may be because of the extremely brutal vocals, and not because of the music itself, which is not that brutal. Disregarding the vocals, it could be musically compared to some dark heavy metal, kind of a heavier and darker version of Mercyful Fate or something. There're no blast-beats, there's no infernal speed, no pig squeals or slamming nonsense; just plain standard old-school death metal, broadly mid-paced. Obviously, this is not a flaw for anyone who like good classic death metal, and of course, this is a work Cthulhu would be proud of.