There is a madness to my method when it comes to writing these things. What I do is I sit down and play the record through once and the first word or expression that comes to my mind is usually the jumping off point when I put virtual pen to virtual paper, and the word that sprung to mind when Catharia’s newest album, Unimaginable Dreams of Fate, was cranked up so loud it would make a normal persons ears bleed was ‘slaughter.’
I don’t mean as in you’ve just walked into a crime scene of horrendous slaughter after the fact, but as in you’ve just walked in on The Manson Family gutting Sharon Tate and her friends.
Yeah, it’s that fucking brutal.
Catharia is a band that don’t fuck about. They are an exteme black metal band who are more than happy to try and stove your head in with whirlwind guitars, violent percussion, and a vocal range that switches between unearthly growls and throat shredding screams with such ease that you find yourself hoping you never bump into Catharia in a dark alley, for fear they would try and eat your soul. But, to just see Catharia and Unimaginable Dreams of Fate as nothing more than extreme black metal is to do a very techinical, very ingenious band a massive disservice.
Catharia knows that you are here to have your mind blown and your bones broken, but they also know when sugar is a sweeter option. Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not like they burst out into an 80s power ballad half way through Unimaginable Dreams of Fate, but they do ease up once in a while.
Elfen Tanzen is an example of this, where the full on GBH you have been willingly suffering so far is replaced by a magnificently gentle piece of music, which is akin to being in the back of an ambulance as your rushed to A&E as the medics work to keep you breathing, and the title track itself is heavy as hell, but relies on the musicianship to carry it through its dark, twisted landscapes, instead of the hell for leather approach found elsewhere on this album.
Not that there’s anything wrong with the hell for leather approach as Catharia does it better than most, and I love that this record picks my up by the scruff of my neck and slams me against the wall, but these moments of lucidity in the malestrom of madness that storm around them, makes Unimaginable Dreams of Fate a statement of intent.
Catharia are a band that needs to be taken seriously as a major force in the extreme metal scene and Unimaginable Dreams of Fate is the sound of a band staking their claim in the higher echelons of the genre.
It really is that fucking good.
