Description
Since their inception, Cowardice have always leaned into teasing their individual boundary of metal. Slow and dirging, yet righteous and vigilant in its delivery. With every release, the evolution of Cowardice has never understated its ability to grow and branch into sensibilities that do not conform to the stalwart pillars of doom metal.
“Atavist” sees the band at their most daring of limits. Capitalizing on the dichotomy of melancholia and agonizing, churning, sludgy guitar work from the “Fealty” EP, “Atavist” pushes the basis further. A double-album in its entirety, “Atavist” challenges the listener to a one-and-a-half hour listen in its totality. In “Atavist’s” first half, titled ‘Suzerain,’ Cowardice seeks a triumphant and glistening sonic bout of down-tuned metal. Through passages of gleaming slide guitar leads and hopeful clean vocalization dotted therein, ‘Suzerain’ slowly gives way to the darker latter half of the journey that is “Atavist.” Transitioning out of ‘Suzerain,’ enters the second album comprised within “Atavist;” ‘Sentinel.” In its reigns of ultra-low tuned guitars, ‘Sentinel’ breaks the mold of ‘Suzerain’ and submerges the listener into the brutalizing woes of glacially slow paces of doom metal, intermingled with funereal harmonies meant only to deliver the listener deeper into the mire that is “Atavist.” In cataclysmic fashion, ‘Sentinel’ finalizes the “Atavist” experience with its 17-minute closer, “Hall of Mages,” which serves only to mangle those who take it on into despondency.
A challenge in itself, “Atavist” demands the willpower of its listener. It demands a sharpened attentiveness of those who refuse to tire. This record is for those who dare to challenge their understanding of hopefulness. To understand deceit, and blood, and betrayal, is to understand the statement “Atavist” strives to make. This is for the outcasts who reside on the fringes of society. For the frayed who have come to realize the bitter truth of it all; that these are our lives.
