Album Review: Insanity Cult – Κάθοδος (Cathode)

Band: Insanity Cult
Title: Κάθοδος (Cathode)
Label: Tragedy Productions
Release date: February 28th, 2025
Country: Greece
Format reviewed: High-Quality Digital Recording

Album review by #Sílvia

Insanity Cult is a Greek Black Metal band that has just released their 4th full-length album, “Κάθοδος”, which means “Cathode”, and I thought it was a curious title for an album if it was referring to physics. I just did some research, and I found out that the Greek word Κάθοδος is translated as “downward path”, and then it makes more sense…

The overall sound of these songs is like a descent to the darkest emotions.

After two minutes of an ambient intro, pretty mysterious and unsettling, “Travelogue in Nightmares” kicks in, it’s one of the longest tracks, 11 minutes and a half. It is composed of two parts separated by a soft passage where the drums disappear, the guitars play a dark melody with plucked notes and the addition of a distorted sound, the bass rumbles with its low notes, the sound of a drop falling rhythmically as in a puddle inside a cave makes your breathing slow down, to then speed up when the second part of this song strikes. Greek lyrics are not a problem for me to feel the cold, sorrow and despair, which is a great combination.

The main sensation when I’m listening to “Κάθοδος” is that I’m dragged to a dark hole where light never enters, and I feel surrounded by a thick and sorrowful atmosphere. I’m touched by grief, I’m in solitude, mourning about an unspecific loss, and knowing that I won’t leave this place ‘cause even if it makes me feel sore and sad, here is where I belong.

Vocals are like screams of anger, agony and despair all mixed together, but in a too repetitive tone overall, at least for my taste, with few exceptions like the spoken part in the closing track “Into a Fathomless Dawn”.

There’s an abundance of tremolo riffs, dark melodies and hypnotic loops; sometimes guitars are playing an obsessive tremolo passage and then another guitar is added to convey an unsettling feeling that dominates the listener. And the bass, it has a strong presence, not a mere filler, and it’s highly responsible for the dark and sorrowful tone of this album.

Drums are playing different patterns that go from mid-tempos to blast beats, I also can listen a lot of cymbals being smashed all the time, I’m specially hooked with the drummer’s performance at “Whispering Depths”, mesmerized with the maintained fast tempo and the varied use of all elements to create an immersive and captivating sound.

This is a very good offering of Greek Black Metal, with a quite neat production, punching sound and a gloomy atmosphere. 7,5/10

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7,5/10 Victory is possible
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