Concatenatus – Meditation Through the Inner Vortex

Now here’s something we needed.  We were kind of in the mood to feel ultra-elitist, to sound like that friend you hate, the one who pulls out dozens of band names you’ve never heard, all in response to your asking simple questions about a genre or whilst discussing a band.  “I like Belphegor, they’re pretty cool,” you say, only to find them respond with so much obscurity you begin to wonder if you even like black metal.  “Oh, yeah, sorry man, just trying to be part of the conversation,” is your only response thereafter, as you sulk in the corner sipping on a beer far from hand-crafted, which thus mixes with your tears and becomes a drink of the lower metal classes forevermore.  Well, if you want to avoid that life now, if you want to be the guy with all the band names and albums signed in blood, let’s make today the day that everything changes.  You’ll look back on this day and say “that was when I did it, I stripped myself of all my black T-shirts, I put down the Pabst, I wore glasses even though I didn’t need them, and then I put on a Swans shirt and started to listen to real black metal.”  Today it begins, and we’ll start your journey in Chile.

  

Now, if you’ve been around here awhile you’ve already done that, and you also might happen to remember that back in 2014, almost one full year ago, we reviewed a band called Siaskel.  Well, one of the guys in that is in Concatenatus, and we assume this splendid, self-released rarity came for that reason.  Whatever the reason, they’re a new Chilean black metal two-piece consisting of only drums, guitars, and vocals.  But prior, both of these sickened men have been a part of the Chilean underground including Throne of Evil, so we were curious to see the result of this melding of the minds, and considering they numbered this in human blood, yes that human blood we are totally so serious, we absolutely expected to become even more elitist, and probably sign any checks in blood hereafter.

 

Meditation Through the Inner Vortex is merely the first foray of Concatenatus into black metal, but they have the aesthetic completely right for the classic sound.  The production quality is low, but with a general presence suggesting it was recorded in a sepulcher in which they blood used to number it was drawn.  In fact, this entire EP sounds like a blood ritual, which is exactly what you want out of it.  It opens with moaning chants, echoing as the sound of rattling chains suggests the flesh of the virgin witches and warlocks exposed with suppliants, then leading into the work itself.  It’s surprising they’ve pulled this much worship out of only guitars and drums, but black metal is known for a fragile, tortured sound so it actually works to the advantage of Concatenatus, especially considering it sounds like self-flagellation or ritual blood abuse.  Meditation Through the Inner Vortex relies on space, at times, filling any chasms in the riff ritual with mournful shrieks and agonized moaning.  Its only real faults are two-fold.  First, it hearkens back so far into the history of black metal that, though splendid for its presentation, could be easily confused, in fact sometimes it is confused and the flow of tragedy is broken with odd chord shifts, but luckily since it’s such a small sampling and it’s all part of a whole, it corrects itself readily.  Second, you’re only provided with two songs to taste of the ichor coming from the veins of Concatenatus, and without bass it’s difficult to determine whether a full-length would drawn blood to near death or yawn itself into the grave.  But hey, we won’t judge on that fact since this is a first effort, and for the blood alone it deserves your now elitist ear.  We’ll expect more later.

 

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Written by Stanley Stepanic

Concatenatus: Meditation Through the Inner Vortex
Self-Released
4.3 / 5