
CULTUS SANGUINE - Shadows' Blood LP (Black Vinyl)
Black vinyl edition of 200 copies. Released with a printed inner sleeve.
Victorian gothic/black/doom metal. The sheer, pitch-black atmosphere of this is just enthralling, and despite this, the music is never excessively corny or overwrought in its cheesiness (which is kept at tolerable limits). The music is like something a lone vampire would play in a haunted mansion at midnight, or something so grim that could be played at a child's funeral.
The keyboards are the main protagonists of these macabre elegies, sounding mainly like pipe organs that usually play the main melodies of the songs. At times they play some symphonic-influenced passages, or ambient pieces (the entirety of tracks 8 and 10). Most of the time, they're more frightening (seemed like they lifted those up from old horror movies) than they're pretty, so this makes for a refreshing change.