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The words squirm and writhe upon the page, like a cold nest of serpents exposed to the dawn light. Each character twisting and changing, unwilling to be held to a form or meaning…and then they lock and my eyes scan across the lines and secrets rise like mist and bleed into my eyes. Too late to look away, too late, too late. My sanity crumbles as the path of fire materialises before me. Things no one should know fill my mind, whispers of wickedness beyond understanding. This is what I sought, craved, what I thought I desired beyond everything. But I am too weak a vessel for this ancient truth. My soul is extinguished, my spirit atrophied, I am hollow and empty. A lich condemned to darkness.
Hailing from Calgary, Canada, Cultist are purveyors of ugly, disturbing death metal, taking graveyard dirt and headbanging rhythms and infusing them with the essence of warped, interstellar madness and a dusting of ancient rites and forgotten spells. Mystification zine praised their 2022 debut album, Manic Despair, for its ‘righteous, punishing aggression' and ‘brutally thrashed death metal cruelty', looking forward to what the future might bring for this band who balanced that instinctive hook-laden heaviness with dizzying, otherworldly aesthetics so adeptly. Well the future is now and the time for conjecture is over…Cultist are back, with their new album – Spiritual Atrophy!
Opening with the atmospheric intro of ‘Divination Whispers' with its sense of brooding menace, slowly building tension and a desperate need for release, Spiritual Atrophy then explodes into the ripping death metal attack of ‘Coursing Between Worlds' – its adrenaline overload peppered with savage bursts of lead guitar, like snarls of barbed wire. From here Cultist take us riding on the winds of madness through a collapsing universe. From the nervous energy of ‘Neophyte' to the constantly contorting ‘Ascension', refusing to settle into a predictable furrow, blasting into different dimensions and adorned in a glorious, howling guest guitar solo from Scott Oliphant, Spiritual Atrophy is raw and rampant in attack, characterful and sophisticated in thought and construction. The collision of old school filth with vicious blades of progression, along with a dramatic triple vocal attack gives Cultist the ability to carve out a place of their own in the ever more crowded extreme music scene. While songs like ‘False Prophet' and the epic onslaught of ‘Spiritual Atrophy' may be direct, deadly and violent they are also loaded with high impact moments of quality songcraft, making it nigh on impossible to turn away from the bewildering intensity of this voyage through hellscapes and nightmares.
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