Crowned in Veneficum

I wanted to set myself a challenge when reviewing ‘Crowned in Veneficum’, the fifth LP from American death metallers Father Befouled. How long can you go without mentioned the “I” word? Turns out not very long. Much like Emyn Muil or Caladan Brood are to Summoning, Father Befouled are not so much a clone of Incantation as they are Incantation scholars. With each album they expand their studied rumination on the Incantation brand of swampy death/doom that little bit further. The level of detail, nuance, and forethought they dedicate to this pursuit elevates the art of imitation into a new branch of academia: “Incantation studies”. But let’s be serious, the flavour of death metal Father Befouled have been cranking out both predates and is far more considered than the usual OSDM racket.

This is the art of imitation as an act of penetration. They pierce through other interpretations of Incantation that only ever go skin deep, peel back the layers of sinew and bone and eke out a unique and oddly addictive niche atop this newly uncovered flesh. Their ability to smash chaotically fast death metal against droning doom segments that gradually layer up tritone informed harmonic material is so studied that their style of death metal could be viewed as the expanded universe for this brand of death/doom, a new and subtly detailed world where the minutia of this style can be properly unpacked.

The production is fairly warm and organic, with a domineering guitar tone designed to fill out every aspect of the mix, allowing little room to clog up the faster passages with reverb or inertia, but retaining plenty of powerful sustain for those all important drone passages. Drums are relatively soft and low in the mix, opting for a more diminished metronomic role within this direct brand of death metal. Vocals are unsurprisingly guttural, adding some much needed rough edges to the mix given how soft the guitar tone is.

Soft but not lacking in heaviness however. This is still immersive death/doom that makes hay out of those slower passages, using them to build tension and release by way of repetitions that gradually build up the layers with each new iteration. And like an elastic band stretched to the limit, we await the final and inevitable cacophony with anticipation. There’s something mesmerizingly basic about how Father Befouled build these tracks up. The compositions themselves are not all that simple. They are in fact emotionally nuanced and studied works of contrast; between order and chaos, between cyclical rumination and melodic developments. But the raw materials from which they construct this complex architecture is undeniably rudimentary. If we look at an individual riff or chord progression there’s really not much in the way of multifaceted technique to consider for the most part.

But achieving artistic complexity from relatively simple building blocks is in itself cause for praise. It may be the case that Father Befouled’s appeal just doesn’t extend all that far beyond Incantation obsessives who enjoy studying how this style can be unfurled in new and curious directions. But taken on its own terms, ‘Crowned in Veneficum’ still comes out head and shoulders above the vast majority of death metal coming out today, and warrants some attention from the wider death metal community as a subtly original work.

Originally published at Hate Meditations