ASPHYXIUM ZINE

Saturday, May 4, 2024

Full Length Review: Cryfernal "La Gran Victoria Del Mal" (Immortal Frost Productions) by Dave Wolff

Band: Cryfernal
Location: Canary Islands
Country: Spain
Genre: Black metal
Format: Digital album, jewel case CD
Label: Immortal Frost Productions
Release date: October 20, 2023
"La Gran Victoria Del Mal" is the ninth studio album by this Spanish black metal band, comprised of two musicians who work together in Muert (Muert released four full-lengths between 2012 and 2022). Muert’s lyrics center on pre-Christian legends of the Guanches of the Canary Islands, whereas Cryfemal’s focus on blasphemous occultism and Satanism.
Since I was introduced to them by Immortal Frost Productions, I'm not familiar with any of their previous releases. But as a result of their working together in two bands for so long, I'm able to appreciate how intimately personalized their style is. The band utilizes downtuned seven string guitars to create a style of black metal that's malevolently low pitched, often diverging towards death metal.
The band composes with lower key signatures and bizarre arrangements that besiege the listener with heaviness, width and breadth, manifesting an underworld filled with brackish, evil forces. There is no effort wasted on blast, tremolo picking, freehanded bottom from the bass guitars and maniacal, paralyzing shrieks. Well placed doomy sections add near infinite amounts of heft to the heaviness.
This album has an apocalyptic feel, with a harmonic sense like what Immortal might have sounded like if they had consumed mind-altering chemicals prior to recording. There's a sense of hell unleashed on earth, with the gateways to the underworld left open so that you can listen to the screams of the eternally damned. Not from burning, rather from being driven to a point beyond insanity.
The demons evoked by this album are not so much pernicious as they are primal, awakened by one's superstitions and fears of the unknown. While the effect is quite unsettling, it has an appeal once you become acquainted with Cryfemal’s mindset. –Dave Wolff

Lineup:
Ebola: Vocals, all instruments
Guayota: Drums

Track list:
1. Necrocaina
2. Mal Inmortal
3. Escencia Del Caos
4. Manten La Furia Fuera
5. Noctambulismo
6. Despide El Ser
7. Fuerza Sepulcral
8. Muerte Adversaria

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