Caligari Records once again buries another Death Metal corpse into their ever festering grave of a roster. Though the Metal Archives does not contain much info about Celephais, the Caligari bandcamp mentions the band features past members of Abysmal Lord and Grave Ritual, and current members of Repugnant Consumption.
Clocking in at just over 17 minutes seems on the longer side of a demonstration, but Celephais’s foul brand of doomed Death Metal warrants a high replay value. One can tell what this band is all about from the very start of ‘Death Portal’. No frills, no high cost production, just DEATH. The whole demo churns and lurks at a lingering pace which allows the listener to be completely engulfed by the atmosphere that the release creates. All of the instrumentation is drenched in astral levels of reverb, making this release feel more like it is being played in the outer abyss of space than the lowest sublevel of a cavernous pit. My immediate comparison for the production’s sake was a blend of Beherit’s ‘Drawing Down the Moon’ and Spectral Voice’s earlier offerings.
Though the production may be an intimidating characteristic to the untrained ear, the songwriting here is quite good. I found myself going back and listening to many sections over and over again. The beauty in this demo is the simplicity. Very frequently, Celephais lets their horrifying atmosphere be the star of the show and not necessarily any showman level fretboard theatrics or hyper blasting drums. Generally said, the riffs on this demo are very simple, but when overlaid with crawling, chromatic based leads and celestial vocal effects, they take on a whole new power.
While there wasn’t anything here that was ground breaking or new, especially from the riff department, the production and overall atmosphere had me coming back for several listens even beyond gathering what I needed to construct this review. I would be very excited to see this act play in a loud, but very small room to get the full picture of the rotten, ancient atmosphere that they were able to conjure forth.
