Puteraeon – The Cthulhian Pulse: Call from the Dead City (Emanzipation Productions)
Thursday, 5th November 2020
Well, that title is a mouthful, but it does give you a pretty good idea of what the album is all about does it? The Cthulhian Pulse: Call from the Dead City is obviously an ode to HP Lovecraft, and it comes your way via some old school Swedish death metal worship. What’s not to love?
Much of the band’s identity is formed from Lovecraftian themes, and one look through their back catalog says that they’ve been pretty consistent about the whole thing. The Swedish band otherwise plays right into the sweet spot of their homeland’s bread and butter. HM-2 buzzing and d-beat drum patterns make up much of the landscape, as the band rides along into the usual thrashing and mid-tempo patterns. The melodies are there too, as you’d probably expect, adding a nice layer of depth to tracks like “Nameless Rites.” When the band does slow things down a bit, like they do on “Into the Watery Grave,” they lose a bit of their charm and memorability unfortunately. It’s just not quite as exciting as a venomous track like “The Sleeping Dread.” But the need to break things up a bit is duly noted, one just wishes the slower end riffing could be as enjoyable as the speedy tempo stuff.
Puteraeon doesn’t really stand out from the pack when it comes to this sort of thing, but you can’t really knock the solid execution either. What separates the great bands from the average ones in this genre is the strength of the riffing, and unfortunately The Cthulhian Pulse could use just a few more memorable ones to take the band into the next level.
