Decrepit Flesh Relic

Looking at the logo of Civerous, I can tell quite a lot about the band: they should sound murderous and spiky as all hell; everything will be obscure and giant like Cthulhu; this is the bottom floor of underground extremity. Things I can’t tell from the logo: what the band name is, or really that it’s a name at all. According to my expectation, I also guessed that Civerous would be difficult to get into because they ought to be “too heavy” for me, though as metalheads aren’t we always challenging ourselves to listen to albums that are heavier than what we’ve heard before? My point is that actually the Californians come across less scary than I imagined, even though Decrepit Flesh Relic by no means makes itself accessible.

After an intro that instils the idea of something terrifying about to be unleashed, the main content of this debut album churns forward in waves of fearsome death metal riffing and clouds of polluting black metal smog. The production dispels most of my fears about underground elitism, since I nod my head to a few of the groovier parts in ‘From the Crypt to the Cavern’, both the crawling slow ones and the sliding faster sections, all the while enjoying the monstrous roars and shrieks that remain in focus at the front of the mix without revealing many lyrics. Fans of Swedeath might enjoy the bulk of the guitar tone, yet the mood of desperation and insanity that grows across all 7 tracks allows very little time to settle into a steady momentum. I suppose Heads For The Dead sometimes came close to this vibe on their more jagged second album Into the Red, though Civerous still exceed that project in sheer savagery and deconstruction, even if Ralf Hauber’s eerie roars seem a close template for what Lord Foul produces on Decrepit Flesh Relic.

When this album surfaces from its self-imposed exclusion under the filth of rotted animals it proves at its most interesting. ‘Rot Delineated (Decrepit Flesh Relic)’ comes across like an interlude in some ways, entering near the middle of the album to split up the increasingly long attacks from the other cuts and remaining at an atmospheric crawl for the whole of its 4 minutes. Use of violin makes it stand out as more than just a chance to produce a cavernous empty space and show off the glint of a polished bass tone, while its role in renewing the efficacy of further attacks is carried off well. By the time the 11 minute closer ‘Spiral of Eyes’ has gone through two thirds of its action it too breaks for a change, returning to similar stagnant clean guitars as the intro and introducing tender notes of violin once more before the squashing power of the other instruments comes back in a sort of epic death doom finale.

Without those divergent parts, I probably couldn’t stomach the whole 45 minutes of Decrepit Flesh Relic as well as I do. The pure density of the heavy tracks reaches critical mass when you consider that ‘Bone Wreath’ lasts over 8 minutes and the others about 7, making endurance a major consideration. I’m glad that Civerous found creative ways to expand their death/black assault, though personally I would prefer the chunks of flesh to be hacked off in more manageable pieces.