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CULTED
Oblique To All Paths

Relapse (2014)
Rating: 8/10

I could probably count on the fingers of one hand the doom metal bands that have impressed me over the last year or so, but Canada’s Culted are one of those bands who have come up with the goods.

Formed in 2007, this murky quartet have offered three studio releases, with Oblique To All Paths following on from debut Below The Thunders Of The Upper Deep (2009) and the 2010 EP, Of Death And Ritual.

Culted would probably be weighed down by the doom metal tag, because the sound the band makes is so much more than that. Riddled with strange effects, muffled, remote vocals, jarring rhythms and cosmic synths, the only real doom metal aspect of this 62-minute minute slab is the guitar sound of both Matthew Friesen and Michael Klassen, who opt for a hint of tradition. This becomes lost once they are aided by extra member Erik Larsen and his modular synths, however, which entangle themselves within the framework constructed by Kevin Stevenson’s drums and Daniel Jansson’s industrialised sneers.

The overall sound suggests that the musicians herein are not just content with sticking to the basic doom-by-numbers theme; instead, they dabble in all manner of weird cacophony to make this seven-track platter very interesting.

The opening 20-minute monster ‘Brooding Hex’ probably has more in common with regressive black metal in its remote state. It acts as a lumbering soundtrack of suffocating mists and algae-ridden skies, such is its murky nature, as Jansson chokes back the fumes spilled out by those weird machines his bandmates have constructed seemingly out of galactic debris.

‘Illuminati’ enables us to almost reach out and touch the void with its Black Sabbath-styled drone of misery, but the chords are so suffocated in other wares that it’s nigh on impossible to see through the veil that Culted have thrown in front of us.

Always bleak, always overwhelming, Oblique To All Paths is in a field of its own – combining celestial sludge with secluded drone yet all sewn together by unnerving trickles of effects – the result being the off-beat offal of ‘Intoxicant Immuration’ and the extra-terrestrial murmuring of ‘Transmittal’, both of which seem to melt together the sordid quality of G.G.F.H. and the rancid gloom of Khanate.

These guys are a complete mystery to me, and I’m sure they’d take that as a compliment. While they’ve created a noise that doesn’t threaten or suffocate, there is certainly an air of the ghoulish about them. Never does the band labour, even if the riffs rarely budge beyond a trudge. Due to the dragging guitar mixed with those grey rasps, however, Oblique To All Paths acts as more of a cunning whisper to keep you on your toes rather than opting for a face to face confrontation that might reveal a lesser threat.

Detractors may argue that this opus is at times one-dimensional, but I’d argue back that the dimension it belongs to is one so unearthly that who are we to argue?

Neil Arnold

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