If the phrase “industrial blackened doom metal” sounds like a melting pot of heavy music that’s about to boil over, that’s entirely fair. A combination of harsher genres may deter some of the casual audiophiles among us, but if that phrase hasn’t scared you off yet, you’re in for a treat.
The trans-Atlantic collective known as Culted is nearing the release of their third full-length album Nous, due out on February 26th via Season of Mist Underground Activists. Since the band announced the album back in December, they’ve released three singles, each one more rattling and rendering than the last. Before the full album drops, these three dense tracks deserve another onceover.
“Lifers”
Says the band about this initial single:
"The song 'Lifers' is our most direct musical expression. The song acknowledges an indebtedness to the extreme metal giants of our past while also exploring the path of the distinctive and sometimes divisive artist, the individualist, and aesthete. Lyrically, 'Lifers' celebrates the profound wounds of art and artist.”
Before the rest of the band kicks in, voices overlap one another in a crowded hellscape. The guitars chip away on a palm-muted riff as the drums thump, before switching to a ride-heavy beat that allows the guitars to lead in the mix. The vocals are distorted, though in the mix they almost run parallel with the guitars. While doom is the name of the game with this track, it doesn’t drag its knuckles, instead keeping things lively through the drumming and the persistent alternate-picked guitar lines.
“Black Bird”
On this single, the band explains:
"'Black Bird' is about enduring the hardships of existence with a core that's been forged by fire. Culted sift through the psychological noise of existentialism with a sound that hints at merging the primal essence of two iconic albums, namely, Darkthrone's 'Panzerfaust' and SWANS' 'The Great Annihilator.' Culted, as both individuals and collective, symbolically sacrifice the ego to experience rebirth, and from those ashes arise with 'Black Bird.'"
This track layers chimes over the mix, which sees layers of guitars swirling together in tune. It has more of a black metal backbone than its predecessor, though there is a sense of dread maintained via the sampled chimes throughout. It invokes that chilling, Northern violence like a black metal song, while disorienting with its complexity in such a way that it does not deter, but allure.
“Maze”
About this final single, the band states:
"'Maze' is both a reaction and objection to the extra-ordinary, potentially dangerous, awe-inspiring, fear-inducing beliefs, rites, and objects that are often crowned sacred. 'Maze' is sound ordained to render the invisible and the tangible, to make manifest the lamentable impurity of the flesh, and to make sublime the infinite distress of the soul."
Clean guitar lines, chorus-laden chords, and piano tinges combine for this song’s atmospheric intro, and that’s all before the samples creep their way in. Much like “Lifers,” this song’s guitar lines are too lively to be solely doom metal, but overall the line between that and black metal is a fine one which is walked along rather well. In full honesty, it is this track, this eight-minute behemoth, that made me a believer in Culted. It is a controlled chaos, a well-constructed calamity of extreme metal that works almost too well.
The track listing for Nous reads as follows:
1. Lowest Class
2. Lifers
3. One Last Smoke
4. Ankle Deep
5. Black Bird
6. Opiate the Hounds
7. Maze
8. Crown of Lies
9. The Grid
10. Crush My Soul (Godflesh cover)
Pre-order the album via the Season of Mist store.
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