Civerous – Maze Envy (Review)

This is the second album from US death metallers Civerous.

We last met Civerous on their 2020 split with Stygian Obsession, so it’s great to be able to hear a full album from them. Brought to us by members of Aylwin and Tzompantli, Maze Envy contains 42 minutes of cavernous death that’s wrapped around doom and black metal elements.

Maze Envy is a tale of brutal darkness and severed hope. Drenched in foul misery and wreathed in terror, the music is a sinister, blackened feast of malevolence. The songs crush with a doom colossal weight that’s effectively crossbred with death metal horror.

Alongside the firm foundations that are built on rotten death metal and the bones of ancient doom, Civerous ably demonstrate that they have more ambition and ability than you might expect. As well as being Earth-shatteringly heavy and violently brutal, the songs also create immersive atmosphere, conducting worldbuilding that’s detailed in scope and thick with feeling. Strings are used in places too, to great effect. This goes hand-in-hand with progressive touches that allow Civerous to range further than is typical for the style, and this is twinned with an equally atypical technical intricacy. Finally, we have a blackened coating, providing the final layer of viciously violent vehemence that Civerous use to attack with such venom.

Maze Envy is just immense. It’s huge and monstrous, and the songs utterly destroy with their infernal might. And those growls…they sound massive and lightless enough to swallow worlds. On one cut – Labyrinth Charm – the band’s vocalist is backed up by the singer of The Zenith Passage, which turns out to be a good combination.

The songwriting is frequently interesting and engaging. Civerous don’t always do what you expect them to do, which is refreshing to hear. Maze Envy offers a surprisingly varied and vibrant experience because of this. The well-crafted songs instantly give them impression of something well above the norm, and time and repeated spins only consolidates this view.

This is exceptional blackened death/doom metal played with atmosphere and mood-rich menace.

Essential listening.