The Gloomy Reflection of Our Hidden Sorrows

Every musician starts somewhere and at this point in their career, you could easily Daniel Corchado's Cenotaph to Incantation. Both bands relied on tunneling guitars that were devoid of any thrash influences, introduced slower passages that crawled through filthy swamps and consisted of vocals that sounded a lot deeper than the average death metal vocals of its time did. As familiar as this description sounds to a modern audience, it’s important to remember that this approach was a rarity in the early 90’s.

If you discovered Cenotaph through Daniel Corchado’s famous band The Chasm and hope to find something similar, you won’t find it here. There’s no room for gloom and melancholy àla Procreation of the Inner Temple; nor does The Gloomy Reflection of Our Hidden Sorrows share any of the versatile and melodic characteristics that became more present circa From the Lost Years.... No, this record is a loud-blasting and murky affair that conveys a feeling of dread; as if the presence of the dead haunts these compositions. Lyrically, you could tell that The Gloomy Reflection of Our Hidden Sorrows come is the result of Daniel Corchado’s creative craft and yet, the distinction between gore and melancholy isn’t all too clear in this case. Meaning that it's hard to tell whether lyrics such as ‘the flies are my friends, licking my weakness’ are supposed to be taken literally or not.

At first sight, The Gloomy Reflection of Our Hidden Sorrows comes off as a one dimensional death metal record, but there’s a subtle amount of variety that makes a positive difference. ‘Ashes in the Rain’ kicks into high gear right away with outbursts of controlled aggression; only to alternate with these slimy mid-paced sections on occasion and no; Cenotaph promise no light at the end of the tunnel. ‘… A Red Sky’ descends into forgotten caves with its dismal guitar riffs, only to speed up with a few layers of tremolo bits that could have written by either Incantation or Morbid Angel. The rightfully titled ‘Tenebrous Apparition’ sounds absolutely frightening; as if the reaper is lurking around the corner and the hour of death could strike at any moment. Musically, the track kicks off in an usual fashion, but it eventually morphs into Swedish death metal mode with its D-beats and grinding riffs that recall Grave. The eight minute ‘In the Cosmic Solitude’ sounds like an epic death metal attempt that gradually builds up tension with creeping acoustic sections and guitar leads of foreboding majesty, only to bludgeon through the gates with its massive guitar rhythms once things get going. Interestingly enough, the tune eventually takes a melodic turn end and once it does, the early shapes and sounds of The Chasm become somewhat notable.

There are times when The Gloomy Reflection of Our Hidden Sorrows plods aimlessly along and in this case, you could tell that Cenotaph weren’t much of an experienced band yet. Few tunes simply exist, but fail to deliver in the riff department. Weirdly enough, this issue becomes most notable on the shorter songs. Tracks such as ‘Evoked Doom’ and ‘The Spiritless One’ blast into the hemisphere with little memorable riffs attached; even if the vocals never lose their as gruesome character and the twisted guitar leads remain brilliant. The same could be said about ‘Repulsive Ordor of Decomposition’, which plods towards nowhere land at first and doesn’t achieve much by the time it reaches blastbeats mode either. Then again, it’s also hard to tell what the guitarists are playing once the drums become too loud for their own good.

When all is said and done, The Gloomy Reflection of Our Hidden Sorrows leaves me with mixed feelings. On one hand, it has its moments of greatness once things get really going (read; evoke the images of a morbid fantasy). On the other hand, there are times when The Gloomy Reflection of Our Hidden Sorrows doesn't achieve too much beyond a few creepy bits and pieces. Last but not least, the original version puts more emphasis on a bass-heavy sound and makes it extremely hard to point out what the guitars are playing. You want to make sure that you grab the digital remaster from 2019, which fixes this issue.

Alongside The Chasm, Cenotaph stand tall as a pillar of Mexican death metal. But their trajectory has been far from linear. Following a brooding and unique debut, their direction after this point – whilst not terrible – followed a more conventional technical/melodic route in the releases that followed, a path that many chose to take by the mid-1990s as a way to revitalize a floundering genre. But it’s their first offering ‘The Gloomy Reflection of Our Hidden Sorrows’, released in 1992, that concerns us here. Read one way, this album could be seen as an Americanised version of ‘Slumber of Sullen Eyes’. There are the same drab chord progressions formed of loose tritones and only the most subtle dissonance, the same soaring harmonic leads that burst out of the low end to open out the mix, acting as a stand in for keyboards. But beyond these similarities, Cenotaph apply the rhythmic interchanges of North American death metal and use this to contrast with the tension of notes sustained just past comfort. This makes the flow of the album highly unsettling, a restless stop/start of percussive punches punctuated by moments of utter absence.

The production, much like ‘To the Depths, in Degradation’, is a big factor in achieving this effect. The guitars are bass heavy, ghostly, defined more as a presence than the chief musical backbone of these pieces. This can make the riffs in the faster passages hard to follow. But this only serves to heighten their disorientating effects. Drums are sharp and clear, cutting through the mud with much needed focus. The listener finds themselves using the drums and sharp bass tone as an anchor in each track, the only fixed point in an otherwise thoroughly disjointed delivery. Vocals are at one with the bass heavy mix, offering guttural outbursts that only serve to bolster the gut punch of the music.

Despite all the energy that has gone into these pieces, the moments of frantic chaos, the frenetic lead guitars, the busy drums racing to frame the angular structure of the riffs, the overall effect is still sleepy, haunting, evocative of a lurking terror. These are subtle qualities found beyond the simple mechanics of the mixing desk. Cenotaph dilute the chaos of death metal with measured, almost philosophical outbursts of idiosyncratic melodic progression, which are only enhanced by their lawless approach to rhythmic transitions. Once the listener has grown accustomed to the contrast between the lead and rhythm guitar tones, the bizarre melodic shape of the lead melodies becomes apparent. Using unusual ascending scales and twisted harmonic information they wrest the more basic death metal elements from the jaws of chaos and morph it into a structure of malevolent permanence.

It’s akin to a fist fight between Suffocation and Winter. The music wants to embody a sustained blast of atonal, percussive material, but the impulse toward doom is constantly thwarting these attempts, forcing the music to pause and dwell on moments and moods. Cenotaph hold our ears in place, sustaining notes, chords, ideas well beyond the point of comfort, only to slingshot round to a release of faster tempos and conventional power chord riffing. This push and pull takes the best of death metal at the time, and asks it to take stock, to choose the path of most resistance, to evolve into music of longevity and purpose beyond the youthful headiness that had defined to this point.

Originally published at Hate Meditations

One of the earliest death metal bands from Mexico was Cenotaph, who formed in 1988 under the moniker Damned Cross. Under their original name they released a demo tape in 1989 called “Excretion Of Infected Corpses”, before abandoning the gore/horror subject matter and transforming into Cenotaph. Despite its musical changes and fluxuating line-up Cenotaph was able to release a number of notable early death metal albums. At first they played a primitive, more occult style, only to later venture into more abstractly melodic Swedish territory. On all these releases the cosmic, internal and introspective concepts remained a constant, even though the members came and went. Of the band’s original more occult and primitive stage, the tape (and later CD) “The Gloomy Reflections Of Our Hidden Sorrows” is the most accomplished of that period.

The album starts off with the synthesizer introduced instrumental track ‘Requiem For A Soul Request’. If anything this track reminds of a slightly more melodic early Incantation cut circa “Onward to Golgotha”. From the first real track ‘Ashes In the Rain’ the New York death metal influence becomes all the more obvious, this is further strengthened by Daniel Corchado’s cavernous Craig Pillard-like growls. Oscar Clorio (drums) handles his kit in a similar fashion as early Incantation skinsmen Jim Roe and Kyle Severn. The only real difference with their more popular American peers is that Cenotaph is more ambitious in terms of composition and overall concept. They put a greater emphasis on creating an occult atmosphere through sparse usage of synthesizers and there’s a far greater reliance on solo’ing with the guitar and bass both getting equal attention in that regard. The songs Cenotaph writes are also a good deal longer and more involving, with two cuts lasting over 6 minutes and one track lasting over 8 minutes. The remaining tracks are of standard length with ‘The Spiritless One’ being little over three minutes and ‘Infinite Meditation Of An Uncertain Existence’ just a second short of reaching the universally standard three-minute mark. There are ideas aplenty.

‘Ashes In the Rain’ and ‘…A Red Sky’ segue flawlessly and both feel like one mammoth song cut down into two more manageable halves. ‘…A Red Sky’ is much faster and dynamically leaner than the previous cut. The cut demonstrates Clorio’s strengths as a drummer and gives him a structure to show off his chops. In comparison to the preceding track the guitar solo’ing features more prominently, and it is integral to the song’s structure. The guitar break shortly after the 5-minute mark is especially poignant, even though plenty of more solos follow in its wake. ‘Evoked Doom’ is the most typical track of the first half of the album, and there’s nothing about it that you haven’t heard in any Incantation record released around this time, albeit once again the solo’ing is more melodic and engrossing. The sparse use of church organs, bass solos and clean narrative parts add to the gloomy feel. The track’s relative brief length, clocking in over 4 minutes, makes it the most easy to take in, and to get a feel of the band is doing. If you choose to sample this record – this would be the ideal choice, as is the track directly following it.

The highlight and signature track of this album is, of course, ‘Tenebrous Apparitions’. That cut combines the synthesizer atmosphere of “Mansions Of Eternity” era Aurora Borealis with the malevolent and evil sounding death metal one most closely associates with long-suffering American death metal veterans Sadistic Intent. Just like the earlier alluded to Aurora Borealis song ‘Slave to the Grave’ this cut is initially slower with a greater emphasis on the atmospheric synthesizer, before it explodes into a maelstrom of churning riffing and tasteful barbaric drumming with Corchado delivering his best vocal performance on the entire album. Oscar Clorio once again outdoes himself on the drums with some especially effective hihat, kickdrum and blast sections. The guitar break after the two-minute mark and the solo’ing of both the guitar and synthesizer add greatly to the unearthly atmosphere that the cut aims for. The finale should be enough for anybody to see that Cenotaph was surprisingly well-formed in terms of composition even at this early stage in their career. The final last of the album follows in the footsteps of the earlier songs, but it is slightly less adventurous and there’s no stand out track to speak of. Overall the record is incredibly strong and consistent. It is brutal to a fault, and the atmosphere is oppressive. It is not surprising that Cenotaph was considered Mexico’s best death metal act at the time, and for many years after the original line-up splintered.

The band at this time consisted of Daniel Corchado on vocals and bass guitar (who wrote all the lyrics). César Sánchez on guitars, Guillermo Delgado on second guitar, and Oscar Clorio behind the drum kit. This would be the only appearance of both guitar players, while Clorio would remain a fixture in the band through out their career, with exception of second Cenotaph vocalist Edgardo González. Corchado was the band’s creative force through out Cenotaph’s first era of existence, which concluded with this debut record. After Corchado’s departure the band underwent a stylistic transformation shedding members, the original logo and morphed into a more melodic, traditional metal infused death metal unit. Cenotaph would ultimately break up in 2002 after having released 4 albums, a number of EPs and a handful of locally released demo recordings. Their legacy, however, lives on in the hearts and memory of death metal fans the world over. The artwork is a frightening biomechanical vision of unearthly horror you’d associate with the likes of H.R. Giger. Giger has been a well-known inspiration to many an extreme metal band the world over, with Chicago bruisers Fleshgrind most notably copying this cover artwork for their own recording debut “Destined For Defilement” that arrived five years after this release in 1997. The session was laid down at Tequila Studios in Mexico with engineer/producer Hans Mues. This facility was a fixture in the early Mexican extreme metal scene, and Mues was also the one who provided all the keyboards on the album.

The record was originally released in 1992 by tiny Mexican label imprint Horus Productions on both tape and CD. It was later re-issued in 1998 by Oz Productions with two bonus tracks of the “Tenebrous Apparitions” EP. It was re-issued a third time in 2012 by Chaos Records, but now being pressed on vinyl in picture disc format. Daniel Corchado (vocals, bass guitar) left after this album. First he formed his own band The Chasm, releasing two albums before having a short stint with New York scene veterans Incantation, performing on the “Diabolical Conquest” album. During this time he relocated to Chicago. John McEntee asked him to stay as a regular member but he declined because he wanted to focus on his personal project The Chasm. As it stands “The Gloomy Reflections Of Our Hidden Sorrows” is probably one of the better representations of the early Mexican death metal scene, next to Disgorge.

Review originally written for Least Worst Option - www.leastworstoption.com

Despite this being quite an underground death metal album, I really can't even guess at how many times I've played it. I was lucky enough to purchase it shortly after it came out, and ever since then it's ranked among my favorites. It is not only brutally heavy in a dense, claustrophobic sense, but it also carries a doomy, unsettling feel boosted by a low budget but perfectly appropriate sound job.

Cenotaph were one of Mexico's first true death metal outfits, and along with Shub Niggurath and Mortuary, one of the best. The band would move into a more melodic, almost black metal direction later on, but this album is pure, molten death metal, full of occult vibe and depressive atmosphere. That's not to say it lacks aggression, becuase it's brutal indeed. It's simply that it's morbid tone is it's most memorable component. The songs swing from speedy, dense sections to creeping, slithering doom, not unlike early Incantaion, but gloomier. Daniel Corchado, who would also briefly perform with Incantation and later lead The Chasm, makes a great name for himself here with both his writing and his deep, spectral vocals.

Mexico's finest death metal album? Possibly, although Shub Niggurath's Evilness and Darkness Previals would be a close seond, surely. Either way, this is essential for all death metal fans, especially those with any sort of affection for cult classics.

We've got some severe Soulside Journey worship going on here! I've always heard that Daniel Corchado was a big fan of that album, and on this album, he really shows it. Some other parts kind of remind me a bit of Immolation and early Sentenced (ie: Shadows of the Past), especially the totally growly vocals and that wickedly ugly guitar tone...that thing sounds like mountains of septic sludge oozing all over your living room when you hit play. There are key moments of strange atmosphere and melody, which provide an interesting yet equally unpleasant touch and counterpoint to all this doom and gloom.

The doom influence is all over the album, and songs often descend into crawling tempos that are nothing less than crushing. Even though Cenotaph experiment with different tempos, it's at the slower tempos where they really crush. And the balance between atmosphere and sludge is quite perfect: I'm not sure whether to feel as though I've suddenly awoken to find myself abandonned on Pluto or wandering aimlessly through a very dirty and disgusting sewer system.

The drumming on here is really tight, and I'm not surprised that Oscar was the only one to remain in the band after all these years. He handles all the tempo changes with ease and his fills are quite enjoyable.

Now back to the guitars. As I've said, these are the epitome of septic sludge and gloom. Most riffs have a certain element of groove to them, making them rather catchy and enjoyable. There is basically no melody on here played by the rhythm guitars, except on one of the opening riffs for "In Cosmic Solitude." Where there is melody, it only shows up as very brief acoustic passages or the occasional usage of strange keyboards, the latter sounding much like they did on Soulside Journey. Lead guitars are shrieky and echo-y, sometimes played Egyptian-esque melodies, but mostly providing schizophrenic squeals and insane tapping.

My complaint is that since the songs are kind of long, you can kind of get lost in them, and the fact that some ideas are not the most original thing out there. But is it damn good and well played gloomy death metal? Hell yes!

Schooled in the art of relentless brutality and heaviness of US Death metal (a la Incantation and Autopsy) with a sense for melody hinting a Scandinavian DM influence, Cenotaph create a warped album rich a sombre and brooding and ultimately prevailing atmosphere.

This bears an exceptional approach to death metal with seemingly twisted lead guitar discords (echoing the likes of Entombed, Carnage and Dismember) that intertwine in and out of chugging rhythms over percussive drumming as the songs vary from frenzied, blastbeat-laden mayhem to slower, gloomier passages that are enhanced by the use of keyboards (the opening of the track, “Tenebrous Apparitions” is a great example of this).Vocals are an often indecipherable, guttural belch that is pretty much a standard in today’s death metal yet fitting to the uncompromising malevolence of this album. Unfortunately there are flaws to be found that prevents the album from reaching the heights of creative proficiently achieved by others. Firstly, the band attempted to make a fusion between two sounds represented by the bands mentioned earlier and succeeded with impressive results yet some of the songwriting tends to verge on being overly disjointed that makes negligent use of the influences. And lastly, the rather sloppy production which causes some parts of the guitar sound to be buried underneath the drumming, especially during the more brutal passages.

Aside from its defects, this makes more than a worthy listen to anyone who is a keen fan of death metal, particularly from the early 90’s.

Cenotaph have a sound on this album that is quite unique, ranging from intensely fast, chaotic sections, to gloomy doom metal. The general sound of the album is difficult to describe, with guitars tuned low, the constantly audible bass playing either melodies separate from the guitars, or simply keeping a rhythm, and synths (?) providing an ever-present aura that remains even after they fade away.

The first track is an instrumental that begins with a gloomy 6-second introduction, and progresses through a section of the aforementioned heavy guitars, with layered drums (3 rhythms at once!). Shortly after that, one of the guitars begins a solo that detaches itself from the rest of the sound. The solos of this band are not shredded, and are atypical of those commonly found in death metal, since they are not made up of seemingly random scales (such as Decapitated).

The rest of the album is similar, with drumming being consistently accurate and complex, but without any blast beats. A comparison can be made between the vocals found here and those of Antti Boman of Demilich. They are not so much sung as they are... spoken? Not quite. They are not anywhere near as bizarre as Boman's, but aren't growled while remaining very low. A few times during the album, spoken or echoing vocals are utilized, which seem alien and make for fine preludes to a continuation of the standard vocal style.

The album slows down sometimes, like during the second minute of "...A Red Sky," and speeds up a minute later, creating a wall of noise, with the guitar playing intensely fast. Due to the distortion, however, it is difficult to notice individual notes. A minute later, the song slows down for another melodic guitar section, with the rhythm guitar and bass continuing with their doomy veil. Though the general tone and timbre of the album remain the same throughout pretty much every song (one of a gloomy, detached point of view; seemingly watching itself from a third person perspective), there is enough variety within every individual track to keep a listener interested for several spins.

I cannot point out highlights, since this album is incredibly consistent in both its variety and quality; however, the best song no here is probably "In the Cosmic Solitude," which begins with a melodic, almost acoustic-sounding introduction, right before the rest of the instruments kick in. It's interesting to note how that bittersweet melody remains the primary focus and slowly fades away, to give way to a beautiful guitar melody, which eventually burns itself out and returns to original plucked section, though with the 'background' instruments playing a more... hopeful? tune. At about 2:40 the death metal kicks in, and continues until the song is over at 8:17. Note, the song is far more complex than I give it credit!

Though not quite as representative of death metal as a genre as Nespithe or Obscura, The Gloomy Reflection of Our Hidden Sorrows comes damn close.