There’s always been a wonder ever since the very first conscious thought that the ancestors of man conceived to know what laid in the great black that is beyond our world. We clearly don’t know now, and most likely never will. But to explore and try to capture what might lie beyond is something that many people have done before, and with many different takes, you can many different visions. Yet none are so dark, so grotesque, or even so beautifully abstract as what Tome of the Unreplenished has done with their new album.
Other than being a fucking mouthful, “Cosmoprism: The Theurgy: Act I” is a beast of an album that truly goes above and beyond the rest with every single thing that this band does with the record’s execution, layout, art, mixing, mastering, performance; fucking everything! And I’ll be honest with you, I’m typically not into anything that would be labeled as “noise” unironically, but Tome of the Unreplenished seem to have struck a chord in my mind that none have before and it makes me gravitate towards this menacingly mysterious mass even more. In the span of the five track that we’re gifted with for “Cosmoprism”, we go through an aural assault on all of the senses that simply don’t relent and even go so far as to evolve with each following track with one being more disturbing and transcendent than the last. This EP really knows how to crush you literally into another plane of existence that you never thought was possible, one that’s filled with black holes, invisible demons both pulling you apart and crushing you at the same time. Somehow, though, amongst all this cosmic hysteria and vicious onslaught, there’s still music that you can hear albeit pretty minimalistic when you look at it, but even that makes “Cosmoprism” all the grander as it really allows the noises and samples from a dimension of bleak darkness even though the actual instruments do an amazing fucking job (particularly in the fourth song, “Black Hole Resident” (my personal favorite)). Tome of the Unreplenished has somehow against all my expectations taken a vision of cosmic disarray mixed with an otherworldly form of black metal that only a literal hand full has been able to even glimpse, but that doesn’t stop this band from taking it to levels thought impossible.
I’ll even dare to call this an art the likes of which is so dark and menacing that only the truly gifted (or truly demented?) would even think to master, and the people behind Tome of the Unreplenished show this these five tracks that they aren’t fucking around for even a microsecond. This is but their third piece ever as a band, but I’ll be fucked sideways if I don’t call “Cosmoprism: The Theurgy – Act I” a staggering, awesome, and undeniable stroke of utter unique brilliance. My favorite part, though? The “Act I” in the title . . . suggesting there might be continuations of this EP with maybe an album ending with “Act II”, and holy shit would I pay so much money to see that, and you should, too, for this is a ride through the dark that everyone must take who thinks they can endure it!!
“Cosmoprism: The Theurgy – Act I” releases on February 3rd!
LISTEN to the track “Dead Body of God” on SoundCloud either here, or below.
LIKE Tome of the Unreplenished on Facebook here.
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