Title: Coughing Blood
Genre: Black/Doom Metal with Death Metal influences
Time: 20 min
Year:19th February 2018
Rating: 70/100
As I promised at the end of the review about Truchlo Strzygi, here is another Godz ov War's release. In fact, today we're talking about the EP "Coughing Blood" by GraveCoven, a duo from California, USA. To say the truth, this EP is a compilation because it contains both the two-song demos released so far by this band in 2015 and 2016 respectively under the titles of "Coughing Blood" and, with an incredible "imagination", "Coughing Blood 2". The band released in 2016 also a single with the only "Hades" by Bathory, and all this represent the scarce discography of GraveCoven.
These two hateful demons, whose logo was made by nothing else than Christoph Szpajdel, plays a black/doom metal with some death metal influences that are due, for example, to the guitar tone and especially to the vocal performance of James Rauh, that alternates growls (the main vocals) with some screams and possessed howlings ala Black Cilice. The riffing is various enough since you can hear even freezing arpeggios here and there, and the black metal riffs are also able to be melodic, as in "Spiritual Violence". Instead, the pace is incredibly violent since there is a continuous alternation between furious blast-beats and slower tempos with the doom sequences (some very powerful, I must say!) that are less oppressive than you can imagine. Atmospherically speaking, the songs are embraced by somehow ritualistic and dark tunes, especially regarding the two last numbers called "Spiritual Violence" and "The Ecstasy of Hatred", so the band know well how to combine the pure violence with more atmospheric vibes.
In brief, even though the closing "The Ecstasy of Hatred" isn't only the longer number of the EP but also the weaker one because it tends to repeat almost the same things from start to finish throughout its 6 minutes of lenght, this "Coughing Blood" promises interesting things in the future years to come. Sure, it's a shame that GraveCoven are only a studio band, and it's a shame that they released nothing new in these last years, so I would like to test their current status through more fresh songs. Anyway, for the moment, you can only enjoy this slab of dark stuff played with a lot of hate inside. A suggestion to the band: make more doomish your music because I think that your better things comes just from the doom sequences.
P.S.: the band seem to love in a special way the number 73. What is the meaning of this number? I am very curious about that!
Tracklist:
1 - Summoning Vengeance
2 - Furious Fires
3 - Spiritual Violence
4 - The Ecstasy of Hatred
Line-up:
James Rauh - vocals
Phillip Gallagher - guitars/bass/drums
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GraveCoven/
BandCamp: https://gravecoven.bandcamp.com/
Godz ov War Prod: http://godzovwar.com/
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