Antediluvian: Through the Cervix of Hawaah (2011)

Review

Canada's Antediluvian has been getting quite a bit of praise for their first full-length album, Through the Cervix of Hawaah, often being compared to label-mates and fellow Canucks Mitochondrion as practicing a dark, alien form of death metal. So of course I got the album.

A little background information on the themes is appropriate. The term Antediluvian refers to the period before the Biblical Deluge (the Flood), and is often portrayed as a time when everything was greater than it is now--greater good, greater evil, mighty empires, giants, and Nephilim in the world. (This is quite probably the basis for Tolkien's First Age.) It's also a term used to refer to any ancient period that's ill-understood. Hawaah is (apparently) another name for Eve, so the album title refers to all humanity infected with original sin. Cool, huh?


Any concepts aside, the music is excellent. Mitochondrion may not be the best comparison, even within the Profound Lore roster, because the sound is much closer to Vasaeleth. In other words, it's not the mind-bending avant-garde variety. It's the straight-forward variety of death, made as filthy as possible. Ugly riffs and blast beats create a murky vortex of putrid noise, but the production is such that you can clearly hear every gory detail if you want to focus on such things. There are also plenty of doomy sections, the occasional horrific ambient, and some weird, gurgling background vocals.

In short, it sounds like all of the most wicked, evil things of the Antediluvian age going about their barbaric business of dismemberment and debauchery, which are things they like to do simultaneously.



The Verdict: Old-school death metal may be oversaturated of late, but once again Profound Lore has put forth the best of the best. I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars.