The debut full-length album from Dublin’s Coscradh is a menacing dark wonder.
Formed in Ireland in 2015, Coscradh is a death metal band that integrates black metal and doom elements to produce profoundly heavy music. They have released a demo and a couple of EPs over the years, and now they present their first long-player, Nahanagan Stadial.
The title of the album refers to a time in history usually called the Younger Dryas in the US. It is thought to be a time of cataclysm, with meteor impacts and coronal mass ejections from the sun causing the sudden onset of a short-lived ice age that destroyed civilizations across the globe. In Ireland, these events wreaked havoc, decimating the population and driving them off. Keep this in mind when you listen to the album, because that is what it’s about.
The set opens with the title track. It sounds like a catastrophe is underway. You can hear and feel the destruction; if you close your eyes you can see it. Guitar riffs impact you like granite slabs dropped from a great height, pulverizing your senses. The vocalizations are warnings that come too late. The lead guitar describes the rending of reality, and the grimy end to your own existence. The track is ten minutes long and there is no respite at any point.
“Feast of the Epiphany” follows and it is more actively aggressive, like an attack. You might say this track leans more in on the death metal side than doom, and ends in screaming. “Plagues of Knowth” offers a similar pace, even faster, in fact. The music breaks into chaos in the second half and your ability to reason flees as well. “Cladh Hàlainn” is a black metal upheaval, a rattling so severe its echoes might never leave your ears.
The record ends on the twelve-minute epic “Feallaire Dóite.” The mass of the doom in this song has a planetary equivalent. There are pace changes throughout, and magnitude of the musical presence remains dense. For a time, you can hear the howling wind of the ice age grow and the whispering of lost souls freezing in their places of ethereal torment. The is album is a dark destructive wonder. Recommended.
Nahanagan Stadial is out on Friday, August 5th through Invictus productions. Stream sample tracks for free and buy the album at the Bandcamp link below.
Links.
Bandcamp, https://coscradh.bandcamp.com/album/nahanagan-stadial
Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/Coscradh/
Invictus Productions, https://invictusproductions.net/shop/
© Wayne Edwards
Flying Fiddlesticks Music Blog 