Blackened doomhounds, CULTED, crush all your hopes and dreams with “Transmittal,” currently murking up the sound sphere at Pitchfork. The soul-suffocating anti-hymn comes courtesy of the band’s Oblique To All Paths long player, scheduled for release via Relapse Records later this month.
Listed among Noisecreep’s Most Anticipated Releases of the month, Oblique To All Paths is CULTED‘s second full-length and first recording in more than four years. An evocatively grim piece of sprawling doom metal, Planet Mosh crowns the production, “a pleasingly unpleasant slice of doomish monstrousness to darken even the brightest of nights,” while Exclaim notes in a recent interview with the band, “the intense doom and craggly black sounds coalesce into something that references Celtic Frost as much as it does Swans.” Elsewhere, The Sleeping Shaman likens CULTED to, “the bastard child of Sunn O))) and Khanate, conceived after a weird ritual in a forbidden cave, deep in the woods. Yet… something far more dangerous and devious,” further comparing Oblique To All Paths’ sixty-two minute duration to Dante traveling through the Inferno without Virgil as his guide while No Clean Singing compares vocalist Daniel Jansson’s vocals to “pure acid.”
Comments Michael Klassen (guitar/bass/percussion/noise) of the track: “‘Transmittal’ is like the title suggests, a song intended to transmit an experience to the listener. Initially, it may lull the mind with hypnotic effects and repetition perhaps blurring vision and numbing consciousness. But it awakens with a scream to spark a flame and illuminate the world with fire, while scorching the wings of angels to finally reveal the collapse and coldness of space to the listener.”
Adds Pitchfork, “The quartet emerges from a gray phosphorescence of feedback, cycling through ghoulish spoken-word vocals and winding through hellish riffs. CULTED records these things by sending files across transcontinental wires, a perplexing approach making CULTED‘s music willfully obscure. But here, it’s especially intriguing, creating multivalent pieces where the layers stack high and the tangents come as a matter of course–not unlike Deathspell Omega, pharmacologically slowed.”
“Transmittal” is currently streaming at Pitchfork for all your cold, dismal pleasures at THIS LOCATION.
And fans can still check out “Illuminati” via YouTube HERE.
Forged in 2007, CULTED‘s background is unique: Four band members spread out over Sweden and Canada, having never performed music in the same room as an entire band, instead joining creative forces through the marvels of modern technology to compose wholly compelling, finely executed doom metal. Although the CULTED cooperative – Klassen, Matthew Friesen (guitar/bass/percussion/noise), Kevin Stevenson (drums) and Daniel Jansson (vocals/ambience) – have yet to speak to each other in real time, they unite in mind and spirit through their musical manifestations. A truly collaborative effort across international lines, CULTED‘s bleak and epic masterworks of dystopian doom serve as a true testament to their long-distance accomplishments.
Oblique To All Paths will see official release on CD, 2xLP and digital formats via Relapse Records on January 21st in North America, January 20th in the UK/World, and January 17th in Germany/Benelux/Finland. For preorders, point your browser to THIS LOCATION. iTunes purchasers should go HERE.
