Cabal – Magno Interitus (Review)

This is the third album from Danish blackened deathcore band Cabal.

A new Cabal album is very welcome. 2020’s Drag Me Down was murderously good fun, so it’s great to greet Magno Interitus‘ 36 minutes with big expectations. But have Cabal once again delivered the goods?

Yes they have, albeit in a slightly different way than previously.

The songs on Magno Interitus are malevolent deathcore monsters that combine blistering intensity with rhythmic heaviness that’s harsh enough to cause skin to be flayed at 100 paces. The songs are short and nasty, and there’s no filler here, just menacing destruction and surprisingly catchy distorted punishment.

The core sound of Cabal’s take on extremity can roughly be described as blackened deathcore, sort of a mix between Thy Art Is Murder, Martyr Defiled, and Celeste. Deathcore, hardcore, death metal, and black metal elements collide, smashing into each other with great force, to be channelled and shaped by the band into songs that exemplify a certain form of crushing dark heaviness.

The above could also be said of Drag Me Down, so is Magno Interitus just more of the same? Not quite, as the band’s central style has been expanded into newly ambitious realms on these new songs, as well as given a different focus. For example, the blackened elements are expressed in different ways this time around. They’re more thickly imbued in Cabal’s sound, yet simultaneously there are less blatant expressions of this; they mostly now corrupt and blacken the band’s groove-heavy riffs and thundering breakdowns, rather than manifesting as a full-on black metal section. The black metal influences are a supporting feature to the deathcore main, yet are still very important in their own right.

On Magno Interitus Cabal have also dabbled in a few different arcane rites, giving each song an individual flavour of its own. They have added some additional colour into their previously starkly harsh sound by way of keyboards, industrial augmentation, atmospheric highlights, an experimental edge, or guests from acts like Fit for an Autopsy. Additionally, the core elements mentioned above have been taken further; the deathcore is groovier, the hardcore harder, the black metal aspects darker, and the death metal aggression more punishing.

Cabal are undeniably a deathcore band at heart, and present as such, but I really like their take on the stye. They’ve taken the bones of it and shoved them into the fleshy remains of a number of different extreme metal styles, creating a shambling corpse of heaviness and aggression.

Magno Interitus is a very enjoyable and satisfying slab of deathcore that has personality and character. Cabal’s music makes you move and is just fun to listen to, despite its inherent darkness.

Very highly recommended.