Culted - Oblique to All Paths

I feel like I've not been doing my sovereign duty as a "Guy who-listens to rad new metal (preferably-Canadian) and then shares it with the world," a GWLTRNM(PC)ATSIWTW if you will. Here we are knuckle-deep in 2014 and I'm still listening to last year's music! As a grown-ass adult, however, I have long ago mastered the art of deflection, so here goes...

The audacity of these bastards, releasing albums promptly in January! The nerve! The gall! Give us a break will you? I only got around to giving The Doomstar Requiem – A Klok Opera Soundtrack a listen fu**en yesterday! And I've got laundry to do. It was all right, by the way. Dethklok, not laundry. Some parts make me giggle 'n' jiggle, but I'm a fan and therefore my opinion is worth somewhere around zero. Speaking of being dismissive of popular franchises I'm emotionally invested in, GWAR's latest... thingy, Battle Maximus, is also satisfactory, and that's all I'm going to say. This stuff is months old and I'm digressing like a motherfu**er.

So where to start? Well it's winter, and even though the days are getting longer at this point, it's still black metal season, so let's see what we have here...

From the grim and frostbitten kingdom of Winnipeg (earlier in the season they were colder than Mars, look it up) we have Culted with their third release Oblique to All Paths. I guess I should say mostly from Winnipeg, as these guys are that band you've heard of whose vocalist is Swedish and has never met the rest of the band face to face, what with living in Sweden and all. This has some upsides and downsides with regard to their overall effect. On the one hand, the man is screaming across the Atlantic, which is pretty kvlt right there. On the other hand, the fact that they can't record together on an 8-track in somebody's sound-killing basement means we're going to have fidelity issues. The issue being that there is any. Call me old-fashioned, but if you can distinguish individual tones you might as well be listening to Dimmu. I'm more of a Nattefrost, Behexen, rusty auger to the eardrum kind of guy, and hey look I can be elitist too! These guys do a good job simulating it, though, opting for a doomy sound replete with ambient meandering and sound bites from old movies and other media, which they're pretty sure no-one could identify. It was tell whether I was actually comprehending what was going on. 

Long story short, you're looking at some quality sludgy blackened doom with Culted, provided you also like a crisp sound (or don't care, like a reasonable person might). Ponderous and ambient, not quite enough chaos for my tastes, yet still with a modicum of energy. But look at you, you bad-ass. You just don't give a sh*t one way or another, do you?

Rating: 7.4/10

--DJ Spacepirate hosts Burnt Offerings, Sundays 6-8PM