Shroud of Despondency / Cholernik – Split (2012)

With a ton of releases in 2011, Shroud of Despondency is falling behind in 2012 since this is ‘only’ their second one of the year. In this split release we have four track of Shroud of Despondency and three songs of Cholernik, a one-man band from the bass player of SoD. After reviewing SoD’s last release “Pine”, we are quite shocked to hear that the songs presented in this release are way more brutal and more straight-forward in nature.

Opening with some funky guitar structures, “Defeat” has a very direct approach with heavy Doom-ish riffs and very deep growls. The song suddenly shifts into 4th gear and delivers pummeling drums and hellish screams. This style indeed is very different to the band’s previous release, but still captures the sick guitar sounds that characterize SoD. Both “Pain Without Life” and “The Echo of Depletion” are very brutal in nature and border between the lines of Black and Death Metal at times, making them quite appealing for the more ‘brutal’ Metal music fan. “Shapes” goes back a bit into the more elaborate guitar structures with funky rhythms, leaving the listener totally puzzled by the weird but good tracks presented by SoD in this release.

In a more SoD fashion, “Acceptance” is the first track of Cholernik and it features a nice acoustic opening and a solid momentum building opening minutes. The Black Metal vocals are a bit on the weird/annoying side, but the bizarre music is excellent. The riffing is pretty intense and the overall atmosphere is very dense, thanks to the sparse drums. Continuing with “The Warmth”, Cholernik keeps up the intricate and very unique guitar work going. The music, particularly the guitars, has a very raw and natural feeling to it that makes it such an experience to listen to it. The closer “A Dream Withheld” is a very devastating track that cranks up the crazy guitar sections to 11 and just sounds like a deranged trip into somebody’s very sick and perverted mind… truly AWESOME.

In a split were we expected Shroud of Despondency to blow us away like before, we are actually more impressed by Cholernik and ‘their’ amazing destructive sound. Both bands deliver very unique and powerful sounding tracks, but the last three ones are the ones that make this release worth your money. If you like SoD’s previous stuff (like “Pine”), then you will love this release because of Cholernik.

Release: June 18th, 2012

Genre: Black Metal

Country: USA