Album Review: Chestcrush - ΨΥΧΟΒΓΑΛΤΗΣ
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
There’s a bit in “All Star Superman” – which for those of you who don’t know is widely considered one of the best Superman stories ever written – in which Supes' brings Lois to the fortress of solitude. Lois comments that the single key for the front door can’t possibly be safe, at which point Superman tells her that it’s made of Dwarf Star material and weighs half a million tons, because of course it does, because comics are amazing. But that’s really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to strength feats for Superman; he has blown solar systems apart with a sneeze, shattered manacles used to haul stars across the galaxy, held a formative black hole…but why raise any of this? It’s to set the scene. To make a point. For even Superman, with all his Kryptonian might, could not lift something as heavy as this new Chestcrush release. Yet it’s not just the Man of Steel’s physical prowess that Chestcrush could test, for superman is something more. He’s a symbol of all that is noble and good in humanity, our capacities for kindness and selflessness, of being the best you can be. It’s why despite 90 years of fight scenes a lot of people’s favourite Superman scene is one in which he comforts a suicidal child about to throw herself off a building. Chestcrush are the antithesis of this, its photo negative, its mirror image. They stand for negativity, pain, and the obsidian realisation that man is ultimately doomed to drive itself to destruction, and that maybe that’s for the best.
There’s levels to heaviness though aren’t there? It’s more than a case of merely downtuning until your strings flap like a caffeinated hummingbird and riding the lowest of them in a sequence of increasingly redundant breakdowns. It’s more of a feeling, something born of multiple factors that’s readily identifiable upon exposure but can nonetheless be hard to pin down and define. Whatever it is, Chestcrush have it nailed. Completely nihilistic in form and execution, what Chestcrush conjure is less music than some poisonous avatar of misanthropy, relentless, hopeless, and remorseless. It’s that same lightless aura that made Dragged into Sunlight so compelling to me, the sense that the album takes the existence of mankind personally. It’s melodies are sardonic dirges, often as not lunging into bottomless pits of grimy distortion, as they do on “Your Screams Will Echo Long After Your Death”. Notionally, the album straddles the spectrum of extreme metal, selecting it’s implements with a grim finality if leaning more into black and death. The impact proves devastating from first to last, from the massive slam riffs of “Underneath This Rotting Soil Bodies Are Still Bleeding” to the final tolling bell rings out on “The Damned Writhe in Eternal Woe”. There’s such a density to it, this sense of irresistible force and will that presses ever forward over whatever puny barricades you had the foresight to erect. A cover of Crowbar anthem “Existence is Punishment” fits like a glove, boiling sludge heaviness on par with mentally detrimental fare like Primitive Man. Chestcrush inflame matters by smashing the BPM north of 15 figures in the latter half, the snare mashing down the earth like debris from mass warfare in low orbit.
I’ve been spending a lot of time with Bolt Thrower lately; they’re another band that I think defines heaviness, especially on the immortal compilation of belligerent gold that is their “Realm of Chaos” album. I’m trying to draw a comparison here, threads between one project and another to link them in their raw power. Partially it seems to come down to the ability to impose a presence. Realm of Chaos feels thick, burly and physical. Listen to “Through the Eye of Terror”; the guitars feel vast and encompassing, as if they push in at you with violent intent. The same could be said for Chestcrush. The sound is…solid? That would be one word for it. But so much beyond that. Solid in the manner that a singularity would be solid, as though this mass of material has been held under such incalculable pressure long enough to produce an incalculable substantiality in it. When it speeds up – which it does very often – it feels as though a continent is dropping on you.
“Mortal Throne of Nazarene”, there’s another one – Incantation’s second album. So dark, so malevolent, so utterly blackhearted and insidious. And also, so extremely heavy. It’s an atmosphere thing there though isn’t it? Mortal Throne feels like witnessing the butchery of saints, it’s construction seems bent towards the sole goal of capturing the desecration of heaven itself. Chestcrush are less actively sacrilegious but the hateful intent is there nonetheless, their music drips with loathing and the deepest contempt. Every note seems played as a negation of any goodness within humanity, infused with an absolute cynicism it mocks and scorns any insipid notions you may have held that something of the light exists within man, something noble and fundamentally wholesome. Chestcrush rebuke this as a childish fantasy, and every second of their output here seems moulded solely to promulgate this arch distaste for existence.
You might have noticed that I’m talking more about the “feel” of this album than I am the way individual songs actually sound. That’s because for me this is less a collection of tracks than it is a sum of parts, if that makes any sense. It’s never “catchy” and I don’t find it particularly easy to call to mind specific riffs or sections, it’s more the overall “vibe” of the album as a whole package that’s impressing me here. But maybe that won’t be the case for everyone – while I really like what Chestcrush have done, there’s definitely an argument to be made that it’s bloody-minded focus on crushing literally everything can become a touch homogenous. Also – and I know what I wrote earlier about there being more to heaviness than downtuning, but even so - this album is tuned down to letters I didn’t know existed and the distortion isn’t so much “turned up” as forcibly injected with PEDs, which does turn it into a bit of a mush sometimes; not a problem for me, I like goregrind and raw black metal, I left any right to criticise people on production values vanishing in the rear view mirror some time ago now – but again, your mileage might vary. A lot of the riffs are quite similar – effective, but doing little to distance themselves from the charge of sameyness.
Yet if I can construct demerits offhanded at will, the overall impression is no less impactful for it. Chestcrush have unleashed something profoundly gruesome with this release, so if you enjoy cosy evenings curled up with antinatalist philosophy or just standing at the window scowling at everyone, then Chestcrush have an ideal soundtrack for you.
