#civerous

The band seems to be characterizing that intensity with the inventive subgenre tag “caustic death/doom,” and this reviewer can stipulate to the caustic properties of the guitar tone that dominates Maze Envy’s heaviest passages — it’s tasty. But we should note that guitarist Daniel Salinas and vocalist Issaiah Vaca also play in heady post-black metal band Aylwin, and there are aspects of Civerous’s sound that create textures notably removed from the gruesome down-tuned disgust of death/doom. See the George Crumb-like glissando strings that shimmer and keen through “The Azure Eye,” or the guttering glow of the clean plucking in “Endless Symmetry.” Those two tracks function as introductory passages to longer, more dour and (yep) caustic songs, “Shrouded in Crystals” and “Labyrinth Charm,” respectively. But the intro tunes frame the longer compositions with what feel like arch ambitions. Are those gestures post-, or are they proggy?

Some listeners (hello) do not respond productively to the conjunction of “prog” and “death metal” — and to be clear, it’s not Civerous invoking the problematic p-word. There’s a pummeling toughness in Maze Envy’s heaviest minutes (see the opening of the title track, or the closing three minutes of “Shrouded in Crystals”) that’s akin to the growling, blatting, thunderous approach of a biker gang. Those passages ground the record in doom metal’s traditional grit, a gravid muscularity that struts and glowers. The results are more than adequate to banish the preening peacocking endemic in prog’s valorizations of technical mastery.

But still, Civerous makes an idiosyncratic variety of death/doom. It often feels like high-brow stuff (a decidedly proggy attribute), as interested in ornament as it is in ponderous power. The closest this reviewer can come to making sense of the combination of sensibilities is to compare the music to some transcendent visual moments in From Beyond (1986), Stuart Gordon’s hilariously esoteric sleazefest: see the spectacular death of Bubba Brownlee (Ken Foree), or the initial glimpse of the mutated Dr Pretorius (Ted Sorel). Those shots are as gloriously hyperreal as they are confessedly fabricated with cheap foam latex and syrupy fake blood; they are comic and horrific, vertiginous and goofball. At its best, Maze Envy produces a similar collision of ill-fitting but effective aesthetic elements: a strange sort of good taste, and lots of ripping teeth.