Cthonica – Bone Altars of the Vanished Sun

Venezuela’s Cthonica channels national turmoil into a vicious strain of Blackened Death Metal. Formerly known as Okkvlt (one 2017 album), they re-emerged under the new name in 2018 and fit snugly on Sentient Ruin Laboratories: cavernous sonics, occult abstraction, and an uncompromising aesthetic. Their debut ‘Typhomanteia: Sacred Triarchy of Spiritual Putrefaction’ received several accolades and was praised for its coherence. The band itself has been featured on one occasion on our pages.

And now there’s the third full length, ‘Bone Altars of the Vanished Sun’. This new record is an assault. It’s a sonic eruption. Vocals are not the standard growls or shrieks but wet, gurgling gutturals more typical of Grindcore/slam. The production is raw, bass-heavy, and deliberately “necro”, forging a dense, echoing wall where menace eclipses clarity. Beneath the murk, the band shows real craft—balancing blitz and sludge, slipping in riffs, solos, hooks, and tension-building passages—but the mix kinda buries these strengths. growls sit loud and central, and the atmosphere-first approach turns detail into undifferentiated cacophony. It’s pitch black mayhem.

Walls and thick layers of guitars and droning reminiscent of Triumvir Foul, Feather and Bone, Portal and Impetuous Ritual create a barbaric vortex of neanderthal noise. Well-constructed noise, I must add. It’s truly an apocalyptic experience. Six tracks of cataclysmic darkness.

For the fans of dark extreme and HEAVY (!!) cavernous Black/Death metal and earlier mentioned acts. Obligatory for noise mongers.