Venezuelan Raw Blackened Death Doom duo rise from the ashes of a previous incarnation of the project called OKKVLT. Lyrically, musically, and conceptually CTHONICA are focused on expressing the abyss within every human life, not only through the classic, but also and mostly as a Tehomic-Typhonian metamorphosis of every man's reason through what they call, "spiritual putrefaction", or the progressive human corruption through the guidelines of opprobrious disciplines and their teachings, a concept which has shaped and defined the band's debut "Typhomanteia: Sacred Triarchy of Spiritual Putrefaction". Let's see what they have produced

"Act I: The Chalice". The issue with Raw Black Metal bands is how the end result is sometimes just a distorted sound from vocals which cannot be understood. In "Act I: The Chalice" I can't work out what language the song is, but the melody is far better. To give the band credit, the melody isn't too bad actually. It seems like the production which is 'In-House' is not the greatest acoustics at all times, but the band makes it work well enough to build up a melody. Said melody keeps going well enough, but never like it wants to explode off into a Death Metal outburst. The 2^nd half of the song is pretty much pointless and would have worked better as an outro to the album, not as a first song ending

"Act II: The Lantern". Has a buildup that seems to go on forever and not really do anything vocally, D.V. is clearly working harder instrumentally here. You may listen to this and just ignore the vocals, which is what I did because I can't understand them. The melody, that ticks along in the same way that most songs that are due to end does. It doesn't seem like it goes anywhere and nor does the song fit a purpose. In all fairness the final minute isn't too bad as a solo for D.V but it's so distorted that ruins it.

"Act IV:I: Nor The Deadliest Disease Shall Be Compared With His Gift of Salvation..." by now, you've worked out that vocals are fucking pointless to H.K. They don't go anywhere, again and they haven't changed from previous songs. The melody never changes, it feels like a half assed song and that makes it very hard to work out what the song actually does. D.V is disappointing in the song, but you wonder what difference it could have made to spice it up a bit.

"Act VI:III: ... Not As Those Who Served and Preached in Obeisance." Actually has some emphasis and seemingly effort thrown in vocally. Just so I don't sound like a broken record, although I can't work out what is being said, I can see the progression and effort in the vocals, rather late than never. The melody is kept in a good pace along with the vocals, which if this song was how the whole album was it would raise the marks.

I wouldn't be shocked if this is the one and only release unless they change things. It just doesn't go anywhere half the time and vocals don't do justice to the melody most of the songs. This project may work wonders if you can work out what is being said. Only reason this gets a 5 is that D.V doesn't deserve their hard work to go a miss.