Coma Cluster Void – Mind Cemeteries (Review)

Coma Cluster Void are a death metal band, (of sorts), and this is their debut album. They have an international lineup, with members from Canada, Germany and the US.

This album features not one, but two ex-Cryptopsy singers. You heard that right. To be fair, one of them, (Lord Worm), is only a guest vocalist on a couple of tracks, but still. The other, (Mike DiSalvo), is only one half of the vocal attack, the other half being provided by the singer of Dimensionless.

This is not your typical death metal release, not at all. Think of it as an avant-garde mathcore death metal album, with a mind-bending guitarist who plays a 10-string. Oh yes.

If you toss Ion Dissonance, Gorguts, Meshuggah, Botch, Sikth, Blood Has Been Shed and Pyrrhon into a blender, you’ll probably only come halfway close to the racket that Coma Cluster Void create, but it’ll give you a decent starting point.

The songs are progressive, technical and experimental death metal taken to the nth degree, all raging heaviness and off-kilter beats. The band certainly don’t lack for inventiveness, that’s for sure. There are also elements of chaotic hardcore and djent in the mix, as well as the kind of metalled-up discordant jaw-dropping extremity that a band like The Dillinger Escape Plan do so very well.

This is a collection of tracks that takes some time to settle into your brain, but when it does, and when you start being able to follow what the band are doing a bit more, (rather than being constantly blindsided by what happens next), Mind Cemeteries slots into place so well, you start to wonder what you did without it.

This is not easy listening, and will probably even pass by a lot of hardened metal fans, so atypical and harsh is it. However, if you’re in the market for something a bit more different and a bit more challenging than your average extreme metal fare, then Coma Cluster Void should be your first port of call.