Lurker of Chalice - Lurker of Chalice (2005)

Full-length, Total Holocaust Records
June 27th, 2005

Track List:

1. I 02:09
2. Piercing Where They Might 06:12
3. Spectre As Valkerie Is 06:43
4. Minions 09:32
5. Paramnesia 04:08
6. This Blood Falls As Mortal Part III 10:36
7. Granite 05:27
8. Vortex Chalice 06:34
9. Fastened To The Five Points 08:32

Total playing time 59:53

Eliminate society. Eliminate all your ideas, your dreams, your hope and replace them with what you fear the most. Replace light with darkness. Destroy humanity. Destroy all emotions. Destroy all beliefs. Replace rational thoughts and logic with insanity.

These are the range of emotions you experience on listening to ‘Lurker of Chalice’s’ self-titled debut. Lurker of Chalice is a side project of Wrest, the mastermind of ‘Leviathan’. And to be honest, the general soundscape of this release and the emotions explored bear a resemblance to leviathan’s ‘the tenth sub-level of suicide’. However, the sheer emotional outpouring in this album is overwhelming and proves to be more effective than leviathan’s works.

The main accomplishment of this album is that the moods depicted by wrest are genuine. From the first moment onwards, you enter a tortured mind. Wrest takes you through a journey filled with darkness and despair. You seem to drift aimlessly, lifelessly in a parallel grey world. A world in which all senses fade away, only leaving behind fear and cold depression. The atmosphere suffocates you after a point of time and you are left grasping for breath to convince yourself that you are still alive.

Now, onto the music. Most of the instrumentation is downbeat as compared to ‘leviathan’. The drums are nothing special. Nothing flashy. Their main purpose is to move the song along a definitive direction. The vocals are nothing more than spoken-words through some distortion effects and a lot of reverb. The vocals are amazing. If in the right state of mind, the listener will definitely lose himself in the folds of this music. The guitars are fantastic. They sound as if they are far away, and add some incredibly haunting ambience to the music. The riffs consist of blackened tremolo riffs and doomish passages as well. The guitar is mainly distorted although, there is some strumming and clean guitars thrown in as well. The bass seems to be heavily influenced by doom metal and play a big role in this album. They are slow and seem to ebb away at the listener while leading the music. The atmosphere is stunning and suffocating. And nothing I have heard can top the atmosphere that wrest produces in this album.

This is a fantastic release. It is something that has to be experienced. It is a journey through emptiness. A journey through desolation. A journey through the mind of a tortured individual who wishes nothing better than death.

This is one of the most original and captivating music I have heard for a long time. Listen to it and ‘enjoy’.

RATING – 10/10