Carach Angren The Cult of Kariba review Season of Mist

Written By Kevin McSweeney

Halloween is nearly upon us, people! It’s that (black) magical season when the ghoulies are out and everyone is looking to get the willies put up them, which is quite enough to scare you stiff. Just as many people around the world become a little bit Irish on St Patrick’s Day, when it comes to All Hallows Eve, everyone becomes a little bit more metal, as they don black garments and make up, and go about eliciting blood-curdling screams from all in the vicinity , just for the sheer bloody hell of it.

Carach Angren The Cult of Kariba Review

If you’re looking for a suitable musical accompaniment to the festivities, Carach Angren The Cult of Kariba might just fit the bill. Released on October 17th, courtesy of the persistently excellent Season of Mist label, the Dutch symphonic black metal magicians Seregor and Ardek have returned with an EP that tells the tale of the titular cult dedicated to the ungodly memory of a malevolent figure in Dutch folklore.

I was under the impression that Kariba was a town in Zimbabwe, but in this context, it refers to the legend from Schinveld, a village in the Netherlands, of a poisoner and alleged witch, whose devotees get up to all sorts of misdeeds in the dead of night. The five tracks that regale us with this dark tale are as follows:

A Malevolent Force Stirs

This is a spooky little scene setter, narrated by a male voice that sounds uncannily like that of Michael Caine as Ebeneezer Scrooge in A Muppet Christmas Carol. Whether this is intentional or not is unknown, but it certainly enhances the experience for me! With ominous orchestral backing to this unnerving narration, it builds anticipation for the arrival of the imminent heaviness, which, just a minute and sixteen seconds later…

Draw Blood

…commences with the sound of what I thought at first was a didgeridoo. This would be a somewhat incongruous choice of instrument for a musical accompaniment to a tale set in a remote Dutch village. It would certainly be out of place on a black metal recording, but I digress.

The metal commences at mid pace, though the double kick drums are going at a bewildering rate, and the guitars are still at risk of inducing carpal tunnel syndrome. It doesn’t take long for the blast beats to come, and when they do, they come with spine-tingling symphonic backing.

Clean vocals replace the growls at times, and are backed by spectral wails, as the tale is told of some hapless innocent soul whose blood is spilled in ritualistic sacrifice. The quiet, violin-infused moments add an element of poignancy that counterbalances the terror-inducing extremity.

The Resurrection of Kariba

The elegiac piano intro, and a lot of the melody that occurs throughout the song evokes much of the traditional folk music of the European mainland. (Says me, as if I have any kind of knowledge of such music. All I know is that I’ve heard similar sounds in the Eurovision Song Contests of yesteryear.)

The blast beats are present and correct, as they must be. This is black metal, after all, but for all its ferocity, the track manages to maintain a sense of almost mawkish melodrama, which is probably not easy to achieve. It is in this song that the ceremony to bring Kariba back to life is performed, and we learn of the harrowing and horrifying details of her life. A suitably dark sense of theatricality is required, and duly achieved.

Carach Angren The Cult of Kariba

Translated into English, it means: “I come from the grave”. That’s if Google Translate is to be believed, anyway. This is the only song on the EP where the lyrics are entirely in the band’s native tongue. I think we can gather from the title alone that the events depicted therein do not bode well for the people of the village.

Musically, Carach Angren The Cult of Kariba Review is very much into industrial territory, with ominous clanging noises forming the beat, and horror film piano interspersed with horrifying samples provide the musical accompaniment to sinister fricative vocals that occasionally give way to a sumptuous operatic baritone and striking symphonic interludes. This may be a deviation from the standard fare, but in the hands of Seregor and Ardek, EBM stands for eerie black metal as much as for electronic body music.

Venomous 1666

The final track on Carach Angren The Cult of Kariba Review sees an emphatic return to symphonic black metal, as blast beats and demonic screams battle for space with stirring orchestral strains and the plaintive wails of a violin, as the return of Kariba is complete, and she goes about her evil deeds in a mixture of English and Dutch.

It concludes in triumphant fashion an EP that is all good, grisly fun, and a perfect bit of Halloween hokum to provide a soundtrack for that most metal of festivities. It’s ghastly, ghoulish, and more than a little bit camp, and I absolutely love it!

It’s a stellar and sinister return for the Dutch duo, for whom this is their first release since their sixth album, 2020’s Franckensteina Strataemontanus. They may have lost a member since then, but they have not lost a step. We’re glad to have them back, and mightily relieved that we didn’t have to perform a blood-soaked ritual in the dead of night to invoke their return.

Metal Lair awards The Cult of Kariba by Carach Angren four and a half Devil Horns.

Pre-save & Pre-order: https://orcd.co/carachangrenthecultofkariba

Carach Angren The Cult of Kariba Review album art. Season of Mist Records. — The chilling artwork for Carach Angren’s The Cult of Kariba introduces the vengeful spirit Kariba, a poisoner and sorceress resurrected by a secret cult.

Cult of Karibe Tracklist:

1. A Malevolent Force Stirs (1:16)
2. Draw Blood (5:18)
3. The Resurrection of Kariba (4:45)
4. Ik Kom Uit Het Graf (4:51)
5. Venomous 1666 (4:37)
Full runtime: 20:48