Cenotaph - The black oceans of death metal

Almost a year ago, after opening a Facebook page dedicated to the band, drummer Oscar Clorio announced the reissue of the first two landmark works by Cenotaph. What followed was an intense exchange of messages that, in a short time, ended up drawing in other members of the Mexican band as well. The idea was to retrace the history of one of the most fascinating experiences in the entire death-metal scene of the Nineties, the band behind an absolutely essential work, that “Riding Our Black Oceans” which, as I wrote in the band's monograph, can rightly be considered the absolute masterpiece of the melodic side of death metal.

The reissue of Cenotaph's discography is fantastic news for death-metal fans. How did this idea come about?

Oscar Clorio: Well, the idea for the reissues was fueled by the fact that, after all these years, a lot of people keep looking for our records. I had a few offers I couldn't turn down, and in the end it all became reality. Besides the reissue of “The Gloomy Reflection of Our Hidden Sorrows” and “Riding Our Black Oceans”, two new editions also came out - which I never authorized, though - of the other two Cenotaph albums: “Epic Rites: 9 Epic Tales & Death Rites” from 1996 and “Saga Bélica” from 2002. Oz Productions handled it, but under a different name. So the reissues were made in Canada, but with Mexican oversight... bastards! They put out these unofficial editions with genuinely terrible quality, the kind of thing that discredits the artistic work itself and everyone who wants to appreciate it. Again: bastards!

Oscar, let's take a step back and go over the origins of your story from memory. How did Cenotaph come to be? How did you all meet?

OC: I formed the band with the other members Rogelio Burgos and Mario Aceves in 1988, using the moniker Damned Cross: the goal was to put together a death-thrash band. After several line-up changes, the band settled on the following lineup: Gustavo Sanchez (guitar), Guillermo Delgado (guitar), Daniel Corchado (bass, vocals) and Oscar Clorio (drums). It was 1989, and the name we chose was Cenotaph. Three of us lived very close to each other: Daniel and I were just two blocks apart, and Gustavo lived about ten minutes from us. Only Guillermo lived further away, about an hour from our houses, but that was never a problem for us. Daniel and I had known each other since we were kids, while I met Gustavo through his brother, who played on the same football team as me. Guillermo, on the other hand, was playing in another band, Masacre, so I asked him to join us and he agreed without thinking twice. That's how it all began.

And you, Julio, how did you end up joining the band?

Julio Viterbo: Well, my previous bands (Shub Niggurath or Tormentor) had always been on great terms with the guys from Cenotaph. I'd known them since 1987. But after Shub Niggurath's first split, I found myself with nothing to do, so I told Oscar I was bandless and that I'd love to do something with them. He liked the idea, so I grabbed my gear and started rehearsing with them, slowly putting together what would become "Riding Our Black Oceans".

What was the Mexican death metal scene like in the early Nineties?

OC: A period I'll remember for the rest of my life. Living in a third-world country, it was always very hard to get your hands on quality instruments, so bands would usually just try to make do with what they had. Being in a metal band meant something very personal and powerful — it meant being ready to embrace and develop a certain way of life. Today I'm 43 and everything is different, but the drive and passion to play are still there, so much so that right now I'm active in three different bands. The first, called Denial, I formed in 2006 and it plays death metal; the second is a heavy metal band and we'll soon be recording an album; with the last one, I play progressive and art-rock stuff. So, as you can see, I really can't stop! The early-Nineties scene was defined by bands that gave everything for the Mexican movement. It was a phase of discovery and learning, and we were all lucky to be pioneers and "inventors" of our own death metal sound. Bands I still remember fondly include Tormentor, who would later become Shub-Niggurath. It was from Tormentor that Julio Viterbo came, who played with us for a few years. In fact, I also ended up recording an album with Shub-Niggurath ["The Kinglike Celebration (Final Aeon on Earth)", from 1997; ed.]. Other bands I remember fondly are: Mortuary, Toxodeth, Frightfull Cross, Azmeroth, Anarchus, Blood Soaked, Black Thorn, Necrophiliac, Ripping Flesh, Argentum, Unholier, Hardware, Incubus, Darkhalf, Putrid Scum, Pentagram, Tenebrarum, Pactum, Noctambulism, Evil Dead and many more I can't recall right now. All in all, it was a solid scene, well worth representing our identity.

JV: The best scene we could have hoped to live through! Lots of good bands were being born, and I think we were all able to appreciate music much more, because we'd go to great lengths to get hold of all the records, tapes and t-shirts of our favorite bands, which we'd often order by mail and which took forever to arrive; there was also a genuine spirit of brotherhood, which nowadays is increasingly getting lost.

As for "Riding Our Black Oceans", I think it's simply the best melodic death metal album ever made. What I'd like to ask first is: why did you abandon the death-doom of an album like "The Gloomy Reflection Of Our Hidden Sorrows" for a more melodic take on death metal?

OC: It's a real honor to hear that! Okay, this record is truly special to me, partly because the conceptual side of its writing had a lot to do with personal matters. At the time, we'd grown a lot as musicians and felt the need to experiment with a more complex, structured sound. I've always been someone who does what he feels like doing, but I'm also not the type to get carried away easily. Every Cenotaph record is different from the others, and that's always been our goal: to do what we felt like doing at that particular moment, because it was sincere, genuine. We grew up surrounded by the bands that helped give birth to the Mexican death metal movement, and that gave us the chance to test our own ambitions, to create a new style. As for this particular record, it came together from several different angles. Honestly, there were influences, but they were certainly never used to rip off this or that band. Recording that album was fascinating, because at that point the band was basically sailing into waters completely unknown to the vast majority of Mexican bands, and in the end we came up with a record that, in our country, sounded incredibly original, with an innovative style. It's melodic death metal, but not like the kind played by At The Gates or any other band orbiting around a style that was very fashionable at the time. Ultimately, that record put us in a prominent position within the world death metal scene.

JV: Julio: I also feel truly honored when you say it's the best melodic death metal album of all time. I think the same thing: it really is!

Oscar, on "Riding Our Black Oceans", your drum work is really fascinating. It's not marginal at all — it contributes brilliantly to the structuring of the various tracks.

OC: As I've said many times, I'm not the type of drummer who just sits on the stool and takes orders about tempo, fills and so on. I have a restless nature and I like composing on guitar, usually arranging the various tracks too, just as I've done since my first band. As a drummer, I don't like playing just to fill space — I prefer to be an integral part of the expression. Even today, with my new band Denial, I always try to be very creative and expressive. Integrating the drum parts with the rest of the music feels natural to me, but you always have to look beyond the apparent limits of the song itself.

The guitar work is also very interesting…

JV: I really enjoyed playing on that record, especially because the guitar parts were quite complex, and we felt like we were facing a different challenge every day, while also trying to give the band a more professional setup — so much so that we even started touring outside Mexico. Thanks to that record, we actually got to play around South America, and I hold on to many wonderful memories from that time.

Guillermo César Sánchez and I handled most of the riffs, and then, together with the rest of the band, we pooled all our ideas, pulling the various songs together one at a time. I remember that at the time we were heavily influenced by the Swedish stuff — Dismember, At The Gates, Sentenced or Dissection — but we also liked some American bands, like Slayer, Metallica and other things tied to the heavy metal scene, like Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden; finally, some of the stranger progressive stuff also piqued our curiosity. The sum of all this helped solidify our vision of what would become Riding Our Black Oceans.

In the album's liner notes, it's mentioned that the recordings were made entirely in analog, without mixing or mastering, in order to keep the "true" spirit of the operation intact.

OC: Yes, we recorded the album entirely on analog tape. Among other things, there's a video recording, which I keep with a lot of nostalgia, where all the details of the recordings are preserved – I haven't released any of that material yet, because I intend to make a proper documentary... We recorded everything at OIGO studios [in Guadalajara; ed.] with sound engineer Tuti Perales, who since then has been one of the few sound engineers, actually I'd say the only one, to have a real feel for this kind of music. With him we used a 2-inch reel, that's about 5 centimeters, and the experience was more than wonderful. Everything was recorded in the same studio and within a week the album was done.

JV: Honestly, the only thing I can tell you is that it's been so long that I don't remember, although I think we recorded everything in analog.

One of the most interesting peculiarities of the album is Edgardo González's voice, wildly expressive and anti-technical...

OC: When I decided to bring Edgardo into the band, I knew we'd have to "work" on his voice in order to offer something different, a new sonic direction. His was a voice no one had experimented with before, at least not in my country. When Edgardo arrived, I started rehearsing with him: back then, just as today, I really liked the voice of Joakim Bröms (of Sweden's Afflicted; ed.), and that was a big inspiration in shaping Edgardo's style, because we were no longer interested in the classic death-metal guttural style or the usual voice tied to the Swedish melodic scene. In the end, I think we managed to define something unique, a completely original formula.

Edgardo González: What my voice expresses on that record is exactly what I was feeling at that moment, and the most important goal for me was to share my emotions with the audience, seeking a kind of empathy with them, not just within the confines of the record, but also during live shows. In short, I worked toward something unique and expressive.

Let's talk about the lyrics. Are they really about your "black oceans"?

OC: Without a doubt. As I already mentioned, all the lyrics were written by Edgardo, who drew heavily on his life experience and the feelings that had marked it. The lyrics deal with an imagery tied to spiritual death in an increasingly sad and dark world. Unlike physical death, spiritual death carries with it a greater degree of suffering, because will, faith and the "meaning" of existence fade away, and all that's left is misery and hostility. That's all there is to say about the lyrics, and the way these things are described found a worthy counterpart in the music itself.

EG: The lyrics I wrote for that record were an attempt to probe the deepest feelings not only of my own inner self, but of any human mind capable of exploring the darker side of thought.

Let's get a bit more specific and go back through the album's tracklist. Maybe you can tell us something about each of the nine tracks...

OC: "The Solitudes": it's a very solid track, with a powerful sound, great riffs and innovative elements. We decided to open the album with this track because it's marked by a forceful start and all the instruments work together brilliantly.

"Severance": dark, melancholic, proud... it's probably one of my favorite tracks.

"Grief To Obscuro": intensity, power, great riffs and great ideas.

"Macabre Locus Celesta": a very original track, technical, unsettling.

"Among The Abrupt": intensity, meaningful shifts, riffs that outline various degrees of expressiveness.

"Infinitum Valet": this was the first track we wrote when we decided to go for a different sound compared to our early days; I find it an original and unsettling track, able to combine the brutality of our past with new ideas – in short, a track that marks a dividing line between the band's "before" and "after".

"The Silence Of Our Black Oceans": a simply enveloping track, the result of work by Julio and Guillermo; this instrumental gives the album a deeper, more spiritual personality.

"Soul Profundis": for many, the best song on the album, with a sound full of character, where powerful moments and acoustic passages blend perfectly. Despite featuring several variations, the underlying structure is always there, intact, and ultimately I can say that "Soul Profundis" is one of those tracks that people immediately associate with the album in question.

"Ectasia Tenebrae": probably the most rhythmic and best-structured track on the album; for us it was a real indulgence, because with this song the band's change of direction became even more pronounced, with heavy-metal elements with which, among other things, the two guitarists close the track with a spectacular interplay of rhythmic solos. It's not my favorite track, but it's as precious as everything we've done. We've only played this song live twice.

JV: I can't talk about individual tracks, but I can tell you that the whole album, in its interweaving of technique and speed, was also created with the aim of forcing listeners to headbang!

"The Gloomy Reflection of Our Hidden Sorrows" was instead a very important work in terms of the evolution of death-doom, partly thanks to its spatial touches. How did you approach that sound?

OC: It was the fulfillment of the sound we'd been working on since our first demo, and which had already partly developed over the following two EPs. Obviously, on "The Gloomy Reflection Of Our Hidden Sorrows" everything was presented in a more polished way, even though we kept the malevolence and darkness of the previous material intact. In short, it was the face of the inertia of the band's original sound. In terms of influences, of course there were plenty; I don't want to lie and say we were the most original band on the planet. We were influenced by many things, and even today, with Denial, I draw inspiration from different bands, while preserving the spirit of the old days, both in terms of songwriting and attitude. My favorite bands remain Nihilist, Entombed, early Darkthrone, Demigod, Disgrase, Funeral, Demilich, Dream Death, Abhorrence, early Amorphis, Xysma, Immolation, early Carcass, Merciless, Crematory, Belial, Bolt Thrower and many others, all from the genre's golden age.

Oscar, let's also talk a bit about your other two albums, "Epic Rites" and "Saga Bélica". For instance, I think the first represents a less creative version of "Riding Our Black Oceans", while the second is characterized by a more brutal and less complex sound...

OC: As I said before, Cenotaph never used the same sonic formula, changing it from album to album. That's why each of our records has its own concept and its own magic. Why always change style from one album to the next? Simply because we were always searching for something different, something new, being an adventurous band, which set us apart from many others. Actually, "Epic Rites" is a very creative album, and I don't think it's any less so than "Riding Our Black Oceans": the moments, the needs, the moods were different. Ultimately, it's our record with the best compositional structure. What I don't like is the awful cover... in fact, the whole design of the album is absolutely terrible.

"Saga Bélica", on the other hand, has a special meaning, because it was our only album recorded outside Mexico and with a new line-up (only Edgardo and I were the sole survivors of the old lineup). It was recorded by Harris Jones (Sodom, Celtic Frost, Assassin etc.) in Berlin at Spider House Studio. To me it's a great album, the product of a great experience in which we didn't try to do anything new, but rather thought about synthesizing different styles we liked, such as thrash and death-metal. That's all: a powerful record full of brutality and excellent riffs that get your adrenaline pumping.

What do you think of the recent developments in death-metal?

OC: Today's death-metal is a genre with a thousand facets, one that has undergone various mutations. By now there are so many musicians, and this ends up creating confusion, even when it comes to referring to the different styles. In the Eighties, when we started recording our first demos and EPs, the sound of death-metal was essentially just one thing, and perhaps even today many would say that death-metal has just one sound. However, over the years the genre's evolution has led to the development of various paths and stylistic branches, so that today you can hear bands playing old-school but also others doing death-prog, heavy-death, death'n'roll, death-doom, death-whatever, etc. All of this is essentially due to the fact that musicians are trying to do something different. Transcendence naturally belongs to the human sensibility, and this forces various bands, especially the bold ones, to try new paths, to move away from the trails beaten by others. I'm among those who believe there's only one death-metal, the one that was born and christened in the golden years. Everything that came after is something different, a consequence of evolution, but it's not death-metal. As for Cenotaph too, I think everything we did after "The Gloomy Reflection Of Our Hidden Sorrows" isn't really death-metal, but rather a sonic progression that originated from a single sound.

JV: I don't know anything about it. I'm really living in another world, with my music, and I rarely go to concerts. I prefer to stay at my computer, composing music.

Let's close with the usual game: ten albums to take to a desert island...

OC: A question that's really hard to answer. Still, right now I'd say:

Magma – Köhntarkösz (1974)

Il Balleto di Bronzo – YS (1972)

Banco del Mutuo Soccorso – Darwin (1972)

Present – Certitudes (1998)

Universe Zero – Hérésie (1979)

Black Sabbath – Sabotage (1975)

Saxon – Crusader (1984)

Sentenced – Amok (1995)

Dissection – Reinkaos (2006)

Demigod – Slumber Of Sullen Eyes (1992)

Unanimated – Ancient God Of Evil (1995)

Darkthrone – Soulside Journey (1991)

JV: I don't think ten is enough. Anyway…

Judas Priest – Defenders Of The Faith (1984)

Iron Maiden – Piece Of Mind (1983)

Slayer – Hell Awaits (1985)

Kreator – Flag Of Hate (1986, Ep)

Destruction – Release From Agony (1987)

Morbid Angel – Altars Of Madness (1989)

Eloy – Ocean (1977)

Pink Floyd – The Wall (1979)

Captain Beyond – S/t (1972)

Deep Purple – Perfect Strangers (1984)

But I don't think that's enough. It would take more than ten.

(19/07/2015)

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