Clairvoyance Chasm Of Immurement Review
Clairvoyance
Chasm of Immurement
Carbonized Records
2025
The Oxford dictionary defines clairvoyance as the following -
clair·voy·ance/ˌklerˈvoiəns/ • noun the supposed faculty of perceiving things or events in the future or beyond normal sensory contact.
Based on that it's a foretelling of the future, or knowing what's going to happen or having an idea how something is going to go or how it'll end up, that's the jest I get from the definition of the WORD, but the definition of the BAND Clairvoyance might read as “creepy, heavy as fuck old school ass kicking death metal”. I gotta tell ya, after spinning the six(six six) songs on Chasm of Immurement, that definition couldn't be more appropriate.
Clairvoyance formed in Poland in 2019, and as per their press release, “Vocalist Maciej Cesarczyk and guitarist Denis Didenk both shared a love for heavy music and decided to create something out of it even though Cesarczyk at that time had no experience as a vocalist, and Didenko, who moved to Poland from Ukraine in 2015, hadn't picked up a guitar in several years.” They later welcomed drummer Adrian Szczepański and bassist Jasiek Kraciuk to the lineup and began in earnest cultivating a sound that owes to Finnish and US death metal from the 90’s. A release of their three-song demo followed in 2020 on cassette from Caligari Records and on 7” from Polish label, Behind the Mountain. They played local shows, went through some lineup changes, dedicated some time to recharging and finally began recording this very album in the summer of 2024. The entire thing was recorded and engineered by CLAIRVOYANCE guitarist Kacper Pawluk, mixed by Pawluk and Piotrek Polak, and mastered by Polak. The sound is that gnarly bottom heavy and sludgy guitar and drums forward mix that Scott Burns made famous at Morrisound Studios in Florida. You won't find any overly sampled or triggered or compressed drums here, nor will you hear any trebly buzzy guitars or overly reverberated vocals. The mix is somewhat dry, and the songs benefit greatly from what I'll call a nostalgic production. Everything sounds organic and raw with just enough polish. This is what old school death metal should sound like.
Clairvoyance isn’t afraid to mix their compositions up, as many of them contain lightning-fast blasts, chugging down tempo and doomy and depressive elements all at once, often in the same songs! Somehow it manages to be concise and the parts flow well weaving in and out and never come off as disjointed or like they don't belong. “Eternal Blaze” is a perfect example of this. Another example of their mood swinging tempo shifts is the excellent “Hymn of the Befouled” and the rapid fire “Flesh Machine” that breaks into a MAMMOTH breakdown at 2:42. These songs are not short, as none are under four and a half minutes, with “Reign of Silence clocking in at six and a half, and closing track “Monument of Dread” being seven minutes even. I'm happy to report though, they never meander or get boring, and my interest is held captive throughout. The atmosphere here is real dark, gloomy and ravenous all at once. I dig it like a grave, if I may.
Chasm of Immurement is a ride full of twists, turns and varied, well composed songwriting. In addition to that, at its core it's ripped out heart on the sleeve OSDM that fans of Incantation, The Chasm and Abhorrence will find appealing and devour like a zombie gnawin’ on a brain. Blessed are the sick perhaps? You bet. Clairvoyance deliver hard.
-TB