There’s a lot of consternation over where the human experiment is headed. We’ve taken horrible care of the planet that houses us, and our mental faculties are decaying rapidly due to our obsession with social media. Fuck, that’s only two instances of a slew of things we’re committing to ensure the end of civilization comes sooner than expected.

“Maze Envy” is the second record from LA-based death metal power Civerous, and the bio accompanying said album describes the creation as “end-of-times music” for a planet really close to the bitter end. The record is seven tracks and 42 minutes of miasmal chaos, the feeling you’re locked in a nightmare that refuses to release its grip or show any mercy. The band—vocalist Lord Foul, guitarists Daniel Salinas and Alonso Santana, bassist Drew Horton, drummer Aidan Neuner—locks you into a psychologically stimulating corner, and while you contemplate the planet dying, you also imagine yourself morphing into another plane, your soul ascending into a bizarre new reality.  

“The Azure Eye” is a quick intro cut that has sounds simmering and eerie strings, the unsettling echoes leading into “Shrouded in Crystals” that starts sooty and doomy. The growls retch over hypnotic synth clouds, the muddy trudging churning and leaving bruised flesh. The bass clobbers as shrieks strike, a battering force takes hold, and the riffs swagger, dripping out into a strange noise swarm. “Endless Symmetry” is an interlude with strange clean guitars, and then breezy and unsettling passages leak in, simmering off into “Labyrinth Charm.” The tempo is punishing and meaty, the growls crushing as monstrous striking aims to take off heads. The growls crush as the leads soar, a guttural fury taking hold and tearing out guts, and then a dream haze takes over, melodies melting into the sky.

“Levitation Tomb” starts with clean guitars dripping, and then a jolt ushers in skullduggery, the howls wailing as the keys cascade. The pace mashes and drags everything into the mud, the growls turn nauseating, and a hulking pace drags the track into total darkness. The title track begins in a disorienting storm, chugging through boiling keys, rippling charges, and guitars snarling into an enveloping haze. Hypnotic leads unfurl and go cold, strings glazing with mental iciness, the playing gushing weird dreams. The heat overloads as the howls level walls, melodies leading off into a mist. Closer “Geryon (The Plummet)” is awash in doom as the playing aches, the howls ripping and tearing into a battering tempo. The growls destroy as mind-altering melodies sink into the earth, lava lapping from cracked rock, a brief push of serenity devoured whole by madness. The playing lurches and stomps as the stirring power cascades, consumed by fiery gloom.

Our time appears to be drawing short as we scorch the planet and continue to make increasingly poorer decisions, and Civerous are only too happy to drag us there. “Maze Envy” perfectly encapsulates the madness in which we’re now ensconced, and this twisted display of death and doom metal makes the ideal soundtrack to leave behind for whoever cleans up our mess. This is a hulking, snaking display that works its way inside your mind and blackens any hope you have for the remaining days.

For more on the band, go here: https://civerous.bandcamp.com/

To buy the album, go here: https://www.20buckspin.com/civerous

For more on the label, go here: https://www.20buckspin.com/