A good experiment doesn’t have to produce positive results. Acid was a great experiment but The Grateful Dead exist, so…
Some excursions into the unknown reveal horrendous truths. Mind Cemeteries by international mathcore collective Coma Cluster Void is one such truth. Showcasing the extended range guitar in a manner as yet unheard, this is a musical foray into testing the limits of how much disarray can exist in sound. It’s also really brutal. Just before this gets too fucking prog. This is so far from pretentious that it’s probably pretentious again. But not at the same time.
It’s mind numbing how artists from all over the world can pool to create something so claustrophobic and intrinsic. There’s no distance between any note or sound on this record. The gaps between low register guitar manipulation and seething vocals are filled with droning notes and out of this world resonance. While still at it’s manipulated (and now probably mechanised) heart a math metal sound, Mind Cemeteries is a creation that contort the genre in a new fashion. At the very least, it’s going to pull acts towards the dissonant and microtonal movement. Pull them and push them and flip them on their head to be berated by a sound fitting of a Stanley Kubrick torture scene. It’s unsettling, like all good, savage math metal should be.
As playful and nightmarish as Pyrrhon, Coma Cluster Void beats just as hard as bands more associated with bottom string assault. Such as Ion Dissonance. That was never going to be much of a stretch to pull that reference out. The similarities start and end with both acts ability to constantly cartwheel between groove and bedlam. The machinations of instrument and voice conspire and create music inherently pleasurable for anyone wanting to flirt with the void. Maybe just dip a toe in to see how low things can really get. “Everything Is Meant To Kill Us”. Yep. Especially this track. The track list isn’t entirely necessary. It could be played like the recent Gorguts release. One long trip to places most unpleasant. A lot can be said for music that can suck the life out of a room in a positive light.
What doesn’t suck are the “filler” tracks. Existing to bridge the chasm between ventures into parts unknown, the unearthly string sounds are sharp enough to cut the hairs they make stand on end. Listen to the band and imagine it slowed down by a few thousand rpm. It isn’t too dissimilar. These tracks are just an integral part of the experiment and shall not be skipped. The build up from the segue into “The Hollow Gaze” is an unmatchable showcase of just how to bring chaos to life. There are stunning bursts of staccato guitar fire that can help invoke an unshakable sense of dread, but nothing quite like the final closing strings of this practically flawless record.
It’s hard to say where this belongs because it won’t cut it for members of any particular party. Coma Cluster Void as a group make music finely tuned to turn clean pants into shitty pants. It’s a jaw dropping result from multiple dissections of genres and styles. Not simply cutting and pasting into the correct box but bending the edges of everything set before it. There’s no need to totally mess with extreme music. It’s all just noise, isn’t it? Mind Cemeteries is just an all too welcome example of how to warp noise into a product inherently addictive. Despite its prevalence for dropping the brown note.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIQKlK5BkW4
Coma Cluster Void’s Mind Cemeteries gets…
4.5/5