Bereft is the highly-anticipated project featuring Sacha Dunable of Intronaut and Graviton on guitar, Derek Donley of Graviton and National Sunday Law on drums, Charles Elliott of Abysmal Dawn on vocals and guitar and ex-The Faceless vocalist Derek Rydquistare on bass. Such an eclectic formation could only result in something very interesting. “Leichenhaus” is a conceptual album that revolves around a waiting mortuary (Leichenhaus translated into english means mortuary), which is also illustrated on the album artwork. In Germany, back in the 18th century, they used to put these tiny bells tied to the tip of the dead bodies’ toes, in case they would awake from their morbid sleep, and the sound produced by the bells would warn the mortuary watchmen and avoid someone being buried alive.
Bereft’s Leichenhaus” is all about dark, grieve-full and depressing doom. This is one dark and bleak journey into the cold depths of death. The intro, “Corpse Flowers,” serves as a preview for this morbid journey we’re about to immerse ourselves in. “Mentality of the Inanimate”, one of my favorite tracks of the album, follows the line given by the previous track, the guitars mourn with that amazing classic doom metal tone that brings to my mind classics acts like Esoteric, My Dying Bride or even older Cathedral material, on the other hand, I can relate their sound to acts like Asunder or Aldebaran. Besides having that classic doom tone that I personally love, they can be crushing heavy as they can also deliver some beautiful mourning melodies, or even when they blend those two tones together the balance is expertly done. The drum is pounding heavy and it blends perfectly with the bass in the background, although there are some parts where the bass stands out and shakes the soil under our feet with stout chords. The voice is guttural and extremely haunting, as if it’s coming from the deepest and darkest corridors of the leichenhaus. Coming from a death metal background, Charles Elliott’s voice suits perfectly in this whole orchestra of gloom. His vocals are slow and very deep, enhancing even more the whole morbid environment on the “Leichenhaus” . There are a few more tracks on this album, 6 songs in total, that are absolutely awesome and that combine doom and sludge metal perfectly, creating a very interesting morbid, yet enjoyable, mood throughout the whole album. But i’ll leave that to you in order to discover this amazing album by Bereft. This album caught me by surprise and ever since then I’m completely hooked on it. This one goes straight to my personal shelf of the best releases of the year. Amazing debut album, if you’re a fan of this genre, don’t let yourself fall asleep on the Leichenhaus…
You can pick up Leichenhaus here in both formats, LP or CD although it’s also available on iTunes and Amazon.
[audio:http://staging.cvltnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Mentality-Of-The-Inanimate.mp3|titles= BEREFT Mentality Of The Inanimate]
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