CARONTE – SPIRITVS

(Andy Synn wants you all to help him make Caronte a much, much bigger deal)

In light of the increasing success of bands like Unto Others and Tribulation, as well as the massive popularity of a little band you may have heard of called Ghost, it’s surprising that occult Doom coven Caronte haven’t received a similar amount of love and attention.

Maybe it’s because they’re still – despite their love of infectiously psilocybic melodies and gloomily gothic grooves – a little too dark, or a little too rough and rugged (though to me that’s actually part of their appeal) to appeal to a more “mainstream” audience quite as much, or maybe they’re just hanging out with “the wrong crowd” (they’re still very much associated with the Black Metal scene to some people… heck, it was at Inferno Festival that I first encountered them myself).

Whatever the reason, however, I’m making it my mission to give the band’s profile a bit of a boost… especially since their new album, Spiritvs (which comes out this week), might just be their most artfully accessible yet!

Opener “Scarlet Love”, for example, is six minutes of beefy riffs, hooky rhythms, and catchy lead licks – topped off with the ever compelling, always charismatic, Danzig-meets-Tom Waits-meets-Ian Astbury vocals of frontman Dorian Bones – which, while it might be a little on the long side for regular radio play, certainly possesses more than enough moody melodic magic(k) to mesmerise a much wider audience.

That’s not to say the band have “sold out” or “gone soft”, by any means – the ending of the aforementioned opener gets nice and doomy, for example, while groove-heavy, Moonspell-esque highlight “Sagittarius Supernovae” really lets the guitars flex their rougher, riffier muscles a little more – but, well, they definitely could “sell out” if they wanted to… and I wouldn’t even mind, especially if they keep on producing such scintillatingly arcane anthems as brooding early highlight “Aiwass Calling” and the spellbinding “Antikristos”.

Sure, it’s not entirely perfect – catchy-as-hell closer “Interstellar Snakes of Gold” (which actually could be a radio hit, given the right push), is an odd choice for a final track, especially considering the way that the triumphant climax of phenomenal penultimate cut “Fire Walk With Me” (both the darkest, doomiest, and heaviest… not to mention proggiest… song here) just feels like the right ending for the album as a whole – but I’ll be damned if it hasn’t already started to change my brain chemistry a little more with each listen.

So do me a favour and help me spread the word about this band, and this album in particular, because they absolutely deserve a bigger platform and a wider audience!