Corpse Garden - Entheogen

CORPSE GARDEN - Entheogen (GODZ OV WAR MC 2015)

There are not many bands from Costa Rica that I would know. I can only think of Paganus Doctrina and Insepulto right now. But Corpse Garden is also from there and well, I guess this may be my favourite band from this small country with even smaller extreme metal scene. Sadly, I don’t know much about them, no more than I can find on Metal Archives, but I can see that “Entheogen” is a second album from Corpse Garden. Definitely I will have to check also their first CD, but until then it’s “Entheogen” crushing the walls. I actually have tape version of it, unleashed by Godz ov War Productions (limited to 100 copies), but there’s also a CD version released by unknown Satanath Records (need to grab a copy also!).

“Entheogen” is very long, over one hour long album and I have to say that it’s not necessarily an easy listen. And not only due to its length, but also because of the unconventional death metal that Corpse Garden performs. But somehow these sixty minutes go really fast, because the listener is hit by some incredible, exceptional sounding death metal that makes a stunning impression and keeps him interested through the whole album. Corpse Garden style can bring you reminiscences of Death, Gorguts, Pestilence, Nocturnus, Morbid Angel, Mithras and probably many more names… Basically it’s sort of technical, quite progressive sounding band that wants to give their death metal more original and interesting approach, rather than redoing something what was already over explored. And as such, they definitely succeeded. But this is also why “Entheogen” is not so easy to get into. Luckily, aside the whole technical approach of Corpse Garden players and regardless of how complex can this music sometimes sound, it still have many great hooks and absolutely memorable, stunning parts that help you get into it. More so, it is really brutal and aggressive, it is also quite fast, often blasting like crazy (“Suspended over the Abyss”!!!), so you can be sure that it’s very powerful and monstrous, with so much going on in every song, with so many dynamics and variety... It’s just damn well played and highly interesting. I also like the fact that there’s something haunting and eerie about this music and its atmosphere. It’s really dark sounding, not just in the death metal songs, but also with these creepy sounding interludes that Corpse Garden throws here and there. While listening to this album, you can feel like “Entheogen” is a conceptual work, but I don’t dare to guess more, as the cassette has no lyrics or more information about that.

As for technical aspects, I can only say that the whole band’s performance is very well done, from the bass lines and crazy riffs to solid drumming and good powerful vocals. I also like the production of “Entheogen” a lot. It makes the music sound very thick, very powerful and brutal, the bass is so well audible, the riffs are mighty... Yeah, basically everything about “Entheogen” is great, so I am personally impressed.

Standout tracks: “Portal to the Oneiric”, “Suspended over the Abyss”

Final rate: 85/100