Cultist - Manic Despair - Reviewed By metal-digest ! Check it out here at this link: https://metal-digest.com/2022/12/24/cultist-manic-despair/
We have reached an age where death metal is as death metal does. It takes something very special to stand out in a genre where many bands sound quite similar. As the genre finds itself stretching to more and more brutal extreme lengths, there are those bands which have turned in on themselves, reversing time and delivering an old-school death metal sound. This is the approach which Cultist have taken as on the back of their 2019 EP, the Canadian band have delivered their debut album ‘Manic Despair’.
Those who know what that death metal sound is like will not be surprised to find that with ‘Manic Despair’, Cultist sound, well, just like that. Although it may have an overly familiar sound, ‘Manic Despair’ is delivered very well by a band which know how to ply their trade and therefore what the listener will get here is a band kicking down the doors with proper death metal riffs and rhythms designed to pull the listener in. This is coupled with some guttural old-school growls from Vanessa Grossberndt who easily demonstrates that they’ve been eating death metal records for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a long time meaning that through tracks such as ‘Synesthesia’, ‘Locked in Time’ and ‘Vexatious Seizures of Thought’, ‘Manic Despair’ shows all the enjoyability of not only Immolation and The Chasm, but also that rip-roaring thrashing nature of those first few Death records.
‘Manic Despair’ is the sound of a band who have been honing their craft. This debut release is done very well and although it falls a little bit into hero worship genericism at times; Cultist are growing, and it’ll be interesting to see how this band approach their next release. - metal-digest
Release Date: February 5th 2022
FFO: The Chasm, early Death, Immolation
Location: Calgary, Canada
Formed in the summer of 2015, by Jim Petigo, BS, and MG. Vanessa Grossberndt joined on vocals later. We released a demo in 2016, available digitally upon request. In the winter of 2017, MG and BS left, and we went into hibernation. In the summer of 2017, Brodie Wylie joined on guitar, and we released an EP, Cosmic Tomb in 2018, a split with Euthanized, entitled A Pact From the Grave in 2019, and we kept the momentum going. At the beginning of 2020, Brodie left, but was gracious enough to record the songs he helped to write for our full length, Manic Despair. The guitar parts for the rest were written and recorded by session guitarist Depresor. In September of 2020, we found a new guitarist in Joe Pacentrilli, with whom we’ve been practicing and performing material from Manic Despair, and the two previous releases, as well as writing new material for our next release.
Check out their previous release now!
Follow the band at these links:
https://www.facebook.com/cultistcanada
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