Sentient Ruin is proud to partake in the unholy birth of CTHONICA, a black/death metal abomination spawned from the gutters and lost sepulchers of Caracas in Venezuela. The Monstrous 2XLP was officially released this Friday October 25 on digital/2XLP by Sentient Ruin and also sees a tape release via comrades Caligari Records, and a CD/EU LP release via co-conspirators Clavis Secretorum.
On their horrific debut 2xLP Typhomanteia: Sacred Triarchy of Spiritual Putrefaction, Venezuelan blackened raw death-doom abomination Cthonica summon a slithering scourge of pestilent and blood-curdling extreme metal barbarism rarely before fathomed at a state this inhuman, repulsive, and horrific. Converging somewhere in the middle between the agonizing and pummeling doomed death metal of early Incantation and Immolation and the twisted and serpentine blackened chaos of bands like Beherit, Blasphemy, and Portal, Cthonica have then crawled beyond their influences and any threshold of familiarity by adding layers of decaying noise and sepulchral dark ambient to their abhorrent extreme metal creation, as well as subduing to deranged religious and occult philosophical notions to transcend into the quintessence embodiment of all ritualistic aural abominations. The conceptual alchemies along with the decomposing atmospheric mantras added to their pummeling raw black/death framework have yielded a lengthening of their compositions, causing the music to stretch into a wretched dimension of perverted immateriality. Thorough this abject creation process Cthonica have thus harnessed an absurd realm of sonic disfigurement, where extreme metal is deformed into morbid occult practices and begins to embody deviant liturgic and ritualistic traits, taking the glorification and worship of death and perversion to an entire new realm of conceptual and audial atrocity.
Within this abominable work, in their own words, conceptually and lyrically Cthonica aim “to submit to the darkness of unreasoning and to be servants of our unconscious, metaphorically and symbolically speaking and 'to return to earth', and thus, now in the 'home' of the chthonic gods“, so they created the “Cthonica" moniker for themselves, to create a symbiont between their native language and English; as well as to create their own mantra: "Claiming (the) Throne (of) Noxious Illuminative Catharsis“. "Typhomanteia: Sacred Triarchy of Spiritual Putrefaction” - its voice - is thus composed by three main tracks divided as acts, that represent three aspects or steps for what they call "Spiritual Putrefaction”, or "pneuma-morphosis into corruption”: "Act I: The Chalice" (Will: To drink from the cup of Sin), "Act II: The Lantern" (Light: To enlight the paths of Acherontic teachings…), and "Act III: The Verb" (To Dare: As the alchemical / magical principle, to point the sword high and spread the seeds of damnation). The rest of the tracks result from the continuation of the first ones, all in order to "serve as bringers of the leviathanic breath (and winds) of Typhon towards Tehom". The band further states that “in our research for a more frantic and deranged sound, we composed 'Typhomanteia' in a more 'strong' and stressing way, to expose the worst of us and to fulfill our own meta-alchemical system”.
All the recordings were executed by the band themsleves alone between late 2017 and early 2018. The mixing and mastering was done by Hermit ov Tehom (Necrosound Studios) from Precaria (Mexico), who also contributes vocals to the fourth track of “Typhomanteia”. The artwork, one of the defining aspects of the album, is a masterclass of surreal visual horror by praised designs studio BMS Illustration (Tetragrammacide etc.).
The abominable album has been progressively unveiled over the last month by various high profile online publications, with Metal Injection stating that “the Caracas entity plays a demented and hybridized blend of death-doom and black metal, that channels the mystic blur of Portal and the cavernous feel of Incantation or diSEMBOWELMENT” and with No Clean Singing soon unveiling a second track from the album claiming that the band’s music is “primitive, punishing, and poisonous, deformed and disfiguring, but also otherworldly and intoxicating”. Invisible Oranges then unloaded another track from the album saying that “equal parts raw and atmospheric, this Venezuelan outfit’s foray into the dingy realms of doom-driven death metal pretty much single-handedly open the gates of hell and begs for an endless night. Characterized by guttural, misanthropic growls and a human stew of harsh riffage, the album tears space and time in an effort to sink your brain into a claustrophobic mess”. Finally CVLT Nation premiered the full album stating that “Venezuelan blackened death metal crypt stalkers CTHONICA have created the quintessential monstrosity, birthing an album of shocking repulsiveness entwined with morbid and unsettling philosophical deviancies that will stand high and strong as one of the most fucked and abhorrent pieces of (atmospheric) extreme metal to see the light all year. “
Raw blackened death-doom plague Cthonica began in Caracas, Venezuela, back in 2016 (formed by D.V. on Guitars, Bass, and Drums, and H.K. handling Vocals, noise and electronics, lyrics and concepts), rising from the ashes of a previous incarnation of the project called Okkvlt. Cthonica is, and likely always will be, a proudly home-recorded project. Both for necessity due to the precarious access to resources in the tumultuous Venezuelan society and general lack of most things out there, and for the complete refusal by the core duo behind the project to compromise or embrace standardized and commonly acceptable creation processes. As such Cthonica's existence will likely always be one of near complete lack and isolation, a state and condition which has perhaps made certain aspects of their art even more violent, defiant, and abominable. That of Chtonica appears to be an existence of evolved regression, where a state of isolation, lack, and primitivism has evolved aberrantly, and created fertile conditions for the development of deviant and feral art forms. Regarding this aspect of their creation process the band has stated that “we are a home-made recording project because we are oblivious to so-called professional hi-fi techniques and firmly believe that the approach of basic and primitive resources keeps us on the line of what we want“. Lyrically, musically, and conceptually Cthonica are focused on expressing the abyss within every human life, not (only) through the classic but overused Nietzschean cliché, but also and mostly as a Tehomic-Typhonian metamorphosis of every man's reason through what they call, "spiritual putrefaction”, or the progressive human corruption through the guidelines of opprobrious disciplines and their teachings, a concept which has shaped and defined the band’s abhorrent debut 2XLP Typhomanteia: Sacred Triarchy of Spiritual Putrefaction.