Album Review: Chaos Invocation - Wherever We Roam...
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
Saw-fringed lacerations grant fleeting glimpses into the seething viscera of the immaterium, laid bare for those with eyes to see as a rolling convocation of nameless colours, flickering by so swiftly that one might ask if they had ever shown themselves at all. From frayed wound edges bleeds forth luminescent strings of matter that glitter and disperse into the black vault of space, spiralling out to greet the limits of mapped galaxy untold aeons hence. Waxing, waning, ever changing, at once ephemeral and eternal, an iridescent realm of boundless psychic energy in ceaseless flux. Slowly, with a nervous reticence unbecoming of miles of steel bristling with weaponry, the Righteous Adjudicator entered the warp.
Second wave black metal; hallowed be it’s name, great twilit shadow cast long and eerie over so very many of metal’s most proud moments. The cape may be well worn by now, yet still there is little so thrilling as an icebound deluge of demon worship, those scything chords, unholy shrieks emanating from forsaken mist-shrouded crypts, drums raw and martial. I’d like to think that you, dear reader, agree – but if not then no matter, because Chaos Invocation certainly do. And when they stick to the established tenets of the second wave, they can provide an excellent rendition. Take stand-out track “Bridges Aflame”; from the direful encroach of it’s introductory sections to the following blast laden cannonade, then that mid-paced Darkthrone dirge in the midsection, through to it’s epic, melodious closure, the track is a masterly tour de force of Chaos Invocation’s capabilities. If every song was this good, we would be looking an orthodox but exceptional album. But the thing is, every song isn’t this good, and you can almost pinpoint the moment it happens, around the midpoint of the album. “No Throne Withstands” closes with this ascending tremolo sequence that you’d think would be the perfect lead in to a nasty, trudging gargoyle of a riff, but instead it just...ends. As if the band suddenly realised they’d left the bath running or something. And then “This World Wants Us Dead” begins, and it’s here that the problems really take hold.
“It is not a question of will. Chaos is not some blunt instrument against which a barricade may be erected. It is subtle, apt for subversion. One maintains a tireless eye on the doors, the windows, and realises too late that Chaos creeps instead into the foundations, the walls, and had all the time it ever needed to snare you all along”. Ominous enough, spoken aloud in the relative comfort of realspace. Yet here, with the turmoil of the warp rippling the Gellar Field gripped taut about the hull, testing, probing, the dread was all too real. How far, he had wondered, would an inquisitive limb need to inch forth from one porthole or another to brush up against that twisting netherworld? He knew some hushed rumours about the fate awaiting those for whom the protective shielding had failed, furtive whispers of unspeakable corruptions, monstrous deaths too severe for even the vilest traitors. Flesh moulded and mutated into forms recognisable as human only by what knowledge one held of what they once were. A frail thing, a Gellar field, to wager one’s life on a diaphanous veil against cyclonic forces beyond mortal comprehension. “And so, my boys, if there is advice to be given in the face of a Gellar field failure, let it be this alone: retain your last round. You will need it for yourself”.
“This World Wants Us Dead” is overlong and generic, with a somnolent 2 minute introduction and very rudimentary riffs for the most part, but the thing that really bothers me is the faux-goth affectations of it’s chorus. This monotone Peter Steele attempt which just repeats the title over and over. It’s goofy as hell, and matters aren’t helped by the tuneless, drunken clean warbling the band curse us all with at the 5:02 point. The song isn’t a total write off, but even so this was the point where I found myself a little less convinced by the album as a whole. It’s the worst track on the album by some distance, but unfortunately the band shove the second-worst track immediately adjacent to it, “Only in Darkness”. There’s actually quite a lot in the song that I enjoy, but it’s also knocking on eight minutes in length, and features yet more godawful clean vocals – only a small few sections, true, but with a song of this length, those sections could have been pruned and the track would only have been improved for it. It’s unfortunate, as a very good song exists within “Only in Darkness” that gets hamstrung by a few ill-advised attempts by the band to broaden their sound beyond the confines of the first half of the release. The album does end well, with the verminous chromatic riffs of “Engravings of the Quivering Pedestal” at least, but even so, those two previous songs did rather curb my enjoyment of “Wherever We Roam” on the whole.
He realised too late the rot had set root already; pus boiled from his wounds, blood-streaked sludge running like mud over his punctured armour. The field had failed, distortions flexing and charging it’s length before it had simply dissolved, chaos flooding forth to caress and violate where once it had stood. Seconds. Mere seconds before rust patches bloomed on a once spotless hull interior, console screens dimming then flickering off forever. Furnishings in crew quarters blackened with mould, thin films of spores hovering in clouds of cloying dust, blanketing living space with a damp, choking Miasma. Provisions denatured into foul oozing masses, thick with sickly clutches of reeking fungus. Reports of mechanical malfunction cascaded until eventually they became impossible to track; priority was given to maintaining basic life support systems, oxygen generation, hull integrity, power, but with a dawning horror it became evident to all that even the most diligent, frantic efforts could not dam the tide for long. And the men...the daintiest scratch would suppurate. Ailments so slight that they went unnoticed blossomed – the mildest tooth decay becoming jaw rupturing abscesses that spilt their stinking cargo in rivers between brown, crumbling teeth. He vomited, again and again until all he had to give was a gasping, cramping retch into the pool of sick that drained away through holes in the gantry he lay shivering on. Sweat glistened and his eyes rolled, a delirious fever flushing through him in nauseous waves. His armour trapped him in with his own decomposition, it’s anaesthesia systems hopelessly outmatched where they functioned at all. And through it, the only thing with any clarity amidst the mad disorientation, was that voice. Every utterance let loose crippling pulses of migraine that heaved and ballooned behind his right eye, the veins at his temples threading about his skull like a net, drawing ever tighter as a lancing, white hot fracture felt like it shot through the bridge of his nose. “Welcome” gurgled the voice happily.
When Chaos Invocation are content to play by the 2nd wave rulebook, they do so very well. Especially in the earlier half of the album where reside bladed storms of classic riffwork and blastbeats threaded through with strong, alienating melodies like “Ideal Sodom”, the band’s talent for penning lethal black metal shines. They do make frustrating missteps with their clean vocals, and the writing is periodically a bit more stock and uninspired than I would like, but realistically the bulk of my complaints settle around one song – that being the ignoble “This World Wants Us Dead”. Shorn of that one track, “Wherever We Roam” becomes a much stronger album overall, so if you’re in the market for a black metal release with absolutely delightful conventional second wave work on it, then give Chaos Invocation a shot.
