Album Details

• Artist: Lvcifyre
• Album: The Calling Depths
• Label: Pulverised
• Year of Release: 2012
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: solitaryman on 2012-01-23

Regurtitating up from the historically musical city of London, Lvcifyre have arrived with their debut offering The Calling Depths. The current 3-piece has gone through a lot to get to this point, and the scars of the path they've travelled are easily translated throughout this monster of an album. The inspirations are clear; a gritty, Immolation-esque brand of death metal that conjures up early Autopsy and even more blackened-death acts such as Behemoth, at times. It is a very familiar sound for me, very much in the vein of the limited amount of death metal I enjoy. Good for me, maybe for you!


What stands out the most throughout these 8 tracks is the vocal approach of frontman T.Kaos, a wickedly low-register, snarling shout that definitely shuns the "cookie monster" approach in favor of something much more distinct. That doesn't necessarily mean more discernable, mind you. It takes a much more practiced ear than my own to get a grasp on just what's being sung. Beyond the vocal approach, the band is very much affluent in the language of the riff, masking melody with aggressive rhythm and tempo to solid results.

You'll find absolute highlights in "The Calling Depths", "LCF" and "Husk of Impurity" while the rest of the album remains solid and relevant in between. Beyond the excellent and refreshing vocals, the band's next-biggest asset is their ability to shift tempos on the fly, seguing into otherwise disjointed pieces of a song in a manner as abrupt and unrelenting as a rampaging rhino. Instead of writing bridges, they just plow right over the open expanse, and it is a prerequisite to extreme metal that a band does this at least SOME of the time. 

As far as debuts go, Lvcifyre could do worse than what they've managed on The Calling Depths. Potent, enjoyable death metal of a style and substance I find enthralling. Whether or not it's your cup of tea can very much be summed up by asking yourself if you're a fan of the likes of Immolation. The similaries of pacing, tempo and tonality are eerie at times. But don't let me pigeonhole them; if you're a fan of extreme metal in general, this is one new outfit who deserves a shot.

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