Italian occult doom purveyors Caronte are following up 2014’s Church Of Shamanic Goetia with this three-track, 30-minute mini-album – a companion piece that slows their sound down further and takes a much more measured approach than its predecessor.
The heady, opium-trip vibrations and crunched-down, languid guitars build smoky pictures of Satanic rituals while Dorian Bones lends his intoxicated voice to proceedings that gives a sensuality to songs about sex and black magic.
Clearly soaking up Electric Wizard’s radioactive aura, Caronte’s sound is built on hypnotically repetitive rhythms that slink and squirm under your skin. On Invocation To Paimon – named after one of the kings of Hell –Dorian’s voice takes on a Glenn Danzig-esque hue amongst lumbering grooves that morph into spinetingling, ritualistic riffs that rev up on tribal drums before dredging up yet more power from abyssal depths. Elixir Rubeus is a molten, fluid reverie with nods to later-period In Solitude while Rites Of High Theurgy coaxes sonic deliverance from its fuzzed-up, subterranean rumble and waves of wah-wah, finding a higher state in Hadean depths, and promising much for the next full-length.
