Rorcal’s new album may be called Silence… but what it supplies is anything but, as it dives deep into a tumultuous cavern of Blackened Doom Metal, which is ferocious in its delivery and bleak in its tone. The Swiss five-piece have been creating their dark fusion of blackened post-Metal since 2006 and Silence (Hummus Records) is their sixth full-length album. 

This disturbing opus opens with “Early Mourning” and the sound of a harsh industrial landscape eventually giving way to a wave of distortion laid over a phrenetic rhythm. The harsh vocals of Yonni Chapatte sit nicely in the mix allowing the hypnotic riff to infect your mind and pull you deep within. The beginning of the journey is delivered relentlessly and is powerful if not bleak and cold. 

“Childhood Is A Knife In The Throat” drops immediately into a bitter and piercing cacophony with sweeping riffs and a tortured resonance. A short break allows you the chance to compose yourself before dropping into a clanking and thoroughly doomy instrumental section, before finishing with an atmospheric soundscape.

Rorcal continue to provide their music at a blistering pace on “The Worst In Everything”, “Hope Is A Cancer” and “Under The Nails”, while elsewhere the Geneva-based band also show a little variety in the pace of their songwriting. “Extinguished Innocence” lulls you into a false sense of security as an eerie isolated guitar plays over a synth drone before the inevitable distortion resumes, only this time slower. A mesmerising lead hook draws you deep into a heavy yet atmospheric Amenra styled slice of Doomy Post-Metal, providing the soundtrack to an apocalyptic nightmare which builds into a furious crescendo.

“Constant Void” is another slower cut with a sludgy groove providing the backdrop to Chapatte’s blood curdling screams, while final track “No Alleviation, Even In Death” comes in at over ten minutes for another slower and refined conclusion of epic proportions. 

Within Silence there are moments which draw comparison to the likes of Panzerfaust, Mourning Dawn, LLNN and even a little Meshuggah in parts. And if that all sounds good to you, then this abrasive darkness won’t leave you disappointed.

Buy the album here:

https://hummusrecords.bandcamp.com/album/silence

8 / 10 

ABSTRAKT_SOUL_