Since its ghastly public birth with the Xulgrem tape in 2018, the nameless entity behind Ctenizidae has remained single-mindedly focused on creating the harshest, most horrific noise-leaning black metal around. Indeed, to hear Ctenizidae’s works is to witness the systematic dismembering of black metal tropes, only to be reshaped (more like MISHAPED) into something far more disturbing.
Aptly titled, Ctenizidae’s latest ...Of Rotting Soil & Spine comprises six “songs” of vulgar dissection and red-eyed antagonism. With vocals utterly mangled into sheets of white-noise whisper and atonal riffs detuned into an eerily hummable buzz, the almost-laissez faire minimalism across this 19-minute EP almost faintly resembles “black metal,” but only after being left rotting in some outer-cosmos dungeon for many millennia. Wisely, Ctenizidae doesn’t overstay his welcome; his creations here are short, sharp, and shocked, and the listener is left stunned and bewildered, wondering how this could come from supposedly “human” hands.
Those who prize the outsider sounds of Bašmu, Flešš, and Lampir or especially progenitors WOLD and the myriad works of Black Legions founder Vordb are wholeheartedly encouraged to check out Ctenizidae and lose their mind to ...Of Rotting Soil & Spine.
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