The debut album by Kansas based cavernous death metal act Thaumaturgy!
Injecting the bloated subgenre of chasmic blackened death/doom with some much needed cohesion, the debut album from this solo outfit provides an interesting balance of stilted rumination juxtaposed against schizophrenic riff organisations. The presentation is all too familiar for anyone even peripherally aware of current trends within extreme metal. The Ruins of Beverast influence looms large, with giant guitar tones, warlike tremolo riffs underpinned by tight mid-paced blast beats, massive reverb drenched guttural vocals, and supressed drums offering pulses of latent urgency punctuated by choppy breakdowns.
But unlike many of their contemporaries, Thaumaturgy have not only brought some riffs with them, but have taken the time to arrange these in some engaging and teleological structures. Structures that allow the listener to locate themselves within the dramatic narrative arc of these pieces, that bring a scene of tension, rest, thematic introduction and resolution, and some unexpected tangents along the way.
The point is easy to miss, because aesthetically ‘Tenebrous Oblations’ slides easily into the increasingly nebulous trend of dark, cavernous death/doom seeking to deliver the final nihilistic vision of black metal apocalypticism. But this album side steps the arms race somewhat. A more route one approach to production and presentation allows Thaumaturgy to focus more on riff interplay, circling through themes with a degree of menacing deliberation. Tense death/doom coalesces into moments where the music threatens to collapse into formless noise, only to be pulled back into solidity offered by galloping blast beats, providing a framework for repetitive melodic fragments to gain currency, driving the music forward into nightmarishly ritualistic trances of ruminant metal.
The aesthetic is positioned as a mere means to enhance this interplay of themes as the central concern of the project. It is perhaps ironic that although Thaumaturgy offer less in the way of aesthetic flourishes – be that enhancements at the mixing desk, ancillary symphonics, laboured samples – there is actually far more to uncover about this work if one focuses on the interplay of riffs. Far from being the most complex or layered, the appeal of the compositions flows from their ability to jump from elegant fluidity to jagged conflict with ease, and to leverage these competing impulses into a work that is both tense and engaging whilst offering pockets of meditative, ritualistic metal that take one out of domestic experience and into the glum aether.
Sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2d85qaoNl8
