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CONSECRATION
Cinis

Redefining Darkness / Life After Death (2022)
Rating: 9/10

Well the band name isn’t very original, but Cinis is the impressive third full-length album from this Norwich, England-based death / doom ensemble and I heartily recommend it.

To an extent, this five-piece harkens back to the glory days of the UK death / doom scene when the riffs were rainier than a day at the Wimbledon tennis tournament and the vocals grizzlier than Adams! If you don’t know Consecration, the line-up consists of Daniel Bollans (vocals), Liam Houseago and Andy Matthews (guitars), Shane Amies (bass) and Jorge Figueiredo (drums).

When I first latched onto these guys via their 2013 demo Echoes Of The Dead I honestly didn’t expect them to sound so nasty. However, if you like what is often slow motion dirges coated in compost, or murky riffs speckled in silt, or trundling bass lines drizzled in… drizzle, then look no further than this new 60-minute slab which makes sure the storm clouds gather in abundance to the soundtrack of squawking crows.

This is some seriously heavy shit featuring drawn-out, aching funereal bleakness with utterly monstrous vocal expressions. ‘The Dweller In The Tumulus’ tells you everything you need to know about this band; rain-soaked laborious oozing that for just over eight-minutes drags you into its murk, only spitting you out just a minute or so before the end with a pacier vibe.

Consecration are clearly at their utmost destructive with the slow, aching chugging as evidenced on the melancholic drudgery of ‘Ground To Ashes (A Cremulation)’. There are niftier, colder climes too as with the hasty ‘The Charnel House’ where the guitar sound has that blackened sort of dissonance.

For me though, it’s the more mournful acts I find myself drawn to. The abysmal, stark stomp of ‘Embrace Of Perpetual Mourning’ nods to vintage Anathema or Paradise Lost, while ‘A Sentient Haunting’ rumbles like classic Candlemass merged with quicksand Cathedral. Again it’s the smirking, sneering vocal drawl that sets it all apart; a truly demonic, guttural and phlegm-congealed gurgle of utmost horror.

As a record, Cinis comes fully doused in grayscale design, trudging through dismal, sodden meadows and exuding immense, bellowing groans of sorrow. The guitar tone is on the money, the drums plod like a concrete rhino and the bass cracks the foundations.

This is everything you want from a death / doom record as ‘These Fleeting Memories’ slogs with effective melody and ‘Unto The Earth Bethralled’ expresses a melancholic whine in its axe work while almost reaching flatline status with its slow-motion drag. However, it’s not the sort of album that bores in its dragging, far from it. As I said, this harkens back to ashen judders of Decomposed where one can just smell the dirty rain in the air throughout.

It’s time to buy that crane so you can lift this morbid mammoth onto the record deck; Cinis is an arduous monstrosity that will bring doom unto all.

Neil Arnold

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