Celestial Mother Of The Handless Path
Annulment
•
February 26, 2015

Since 1999, Blasphemour Records, a label based in North Carolina, which is specialized in everything about HardCore and MetalCore, with the release of "Celestial Mother Of The Handless Path" by ANNULMENT, this tradition is well perpetrated and respected in its full orthodoxy plenitude, in matching perfectly with every detail!
Indeed, ANNULMENT provide all the identified elements of this highly tagged style with an absolute rigor and an obvious talent: the scorched vocals are full of anger, the dissonant Doomy guitars riffs are in a real predominance ("...And He Has Left Us With An Aching Vastness"), the pace is quite varied from Sabbathian Heavy tempos to ultra fast Slayerian insane blast-beat!
The hypnotic relentless rythmic is a common trick in HardCore, but in this "Celestial Mother Of The Handless Path" this method is uplifted to an artistic state ("Metzger Puppet Profanation"), if the sonic design is quite clean, the organic sensation and the dirty form relieved is still palpable thru the short but intense length of the disc.
Speaking of length with only eighteen minutes of music, as the nine minutes of the last track "All The While, Pan Accounted For Every Stray Bone" is full of spoken words and radio noises instead of real music, maybe its an artistic choice but it could be considered also like a rip off...Obviously the weak point of the whole thing.
Another critic about "Lilith Of Fair Soil, Daughter Of The Endless Arc" which is not too far stylistically from the Sludge sound and very much similar to most of the contemporary popular act in this genre, clearly not the most inventive number!
To me, it seems that ANNULMENT had released a sloppy disc, some parts are great but the final product sounds like a mix bag of etherogene quality...Packed in a reduced format!
5 / 10
Mediocre
"Celestial Mother Of The Handless Path" Track-listing:
1. Patron Saints Of The Ivory Nothings
2. ...And He Has Left Us With An Aching Vastness
3. Said The Cardinal To The Apostate
4. By The Thrust End Of Longinus
5. Metzger Puppet Profanation
6. Lilith Of Fair Soil, Daughter Of The Endless Arc
7. All The While, Pan Accounted For Every Stray Bone
Annulment Lineup:
Anthony John Czerwinski - Lead Vocals
Brian Christie - Guitar
Simon Swist - Guitar
Patrick Duggan - Bass
Steve Valente - Drums
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