Caliginous

Reap the Atrocity

Self Financed 2007

Horrific and traditional black metal issue a chilling vibration across the surface of Reap the Atrocity.  A suffocating air of misanthropy dominates Caliginous' style.  Howling notes screech forth from shuddering guitar chords creating images of macabre nighttime environs.  Mournful guitars instill moods that are both tragic and unfeeling within the icy wastes of Order of the Merciless.  The way Acrimonia bleeds out somber notes that drift into eternity at the end of Order of the Merciless is gut wrenching.  Noetic Supremacy brings to mind traces of early Burzum with the way the the riffs throb at a galloping pace.  Starting with 7th track, Oceanus Procellarum it seems like it is from a different recording session and I am not a huge fan of the drum machine that appears within this song.  Visions of snow draped forests and windswept tundra are summoned by the textures of The Void of The Funerary Reich.  The album closes in depressive and inhumanly lifeless fashion with the down-tempo musings of Seppuku which borders on trance inducing repetition.  A Nice amount of guitar fuzz permeates the recording.  As with a lot of self-financed recordings the vocals dominate the songs to some degree but thankfully the drums do not suffer from this same fate which is also usually the case.  Reap the Atrocity suffers mildly from song length issues.  The music is not hypnotic enough to justify the song lengths.  Calignous could benefit with some more distinctive riffs and condensed songs or Acrimonia could flesh out the guitar passages and make the songs more trance inducing as with Seppuku.  With that said Calignious still manages to create interesting and Pitiless black metal of the most serious order.  With the birth of Caliginous the Canadian winter wastelands have become ever more cold and intense.