In my mind, 1992's The Gloomy Reflection Of Our Hidden Sorrows is a masterpiece of delirious, lysergic Mexican death metal, operating on a strange and hallucinatory level while bludgeoning you with remarkable gargantuan heaviness. I fucking love The Gloomy Reflection Of Our Hidden Sorrows, and it's newly reissued on vinyl via The Crypt in a couple of different colors, featuring the nine-song track list that includes the "bonus" track "Repulsive Odor Of Decomposition". This is one of those 90s-era death metal albums that I've been wanting to write about for years, a standout slab of unique and genuinely otherworldly sounding crush that exudes an unusual, off-kilter vibe that I don't think I've ever really heard anywhere else. It's also a pretty obscure entry in the field, with some mainly knowing it for the presence of Daniel Corchado (The Chasm, Incantation) on vocals and bass. But this one stands out on its own, and anyone hooked on old-school doom-death and the weirder edges of 90s death should be aiming their ears at this STAT.

The band was vocal in their collective intent to create an album that emanated a tangible, eerie darkness and sense of claustrophobia, the lyrics drawing from states of psychological suffering and "spiritual death", but through an innovative perspective - and Gloomy delivered. Like the killer sleeve art from Polish artist Ryszard Wojtynski suggests, the whole thing feels like it could have been forged in the fires of a heavy psilocybin experience. Lush orchestral keyboards sweep across the opening to "Requiem For A Soul Request" as the band unfurls a gloomy, lumbering doom-death dirge crawling with strange dissonant guitar leads and spidery, at times impossibly tangled fretwork. It shifts between that monstrous, creepy crush and bursts of tectonic double bass and sudden chaotic speed, moving into the thundering thrash of "Ashes In The Rain"; the vocals are deep, somewhat buried, and slightly shrouded in reverb, adding to the strange ambience that Cenotaph cultivates across the entire album. Tempos are constantly, violently shifting, and those guitars continue to sprawl out with alien-sounding arpeggios and cacophonic solos, further revealing a kind of demented progginess that lurks deep beneath the surface of the music, surfacing more and more as it progresses. Especially on tracks like "...A Red Sky". Brutish bass guitar breaks through moments of the grungy, subterranean atmosphere with unusual melodies and some seriously rad technical playing, often prominently placed in the mix, with the rhythm section really standing out with their abrupt, almost chaotic attack. It's ruthless in its heaviosity, but Cenotaph incorporate these moments of complexity and whacked-out song structures that build on the whole otherworldly climate of Gloomy. Amid the grinding, bludgeoning heaviness, it constantly surprises: the bizarre ambient murk that starts off "Evoked Doom", the sickly horror-film synths and berserk, totally ghastly-sounding atonal shred of "Tenebrous Apparitions", the ritual chanting and synthesizer blurts within "The Spiritless One", delicate, spooky acoustic guitar floating over the volcanic double-bass drumming of the instrumental "Infinite Meditation Of An Uncertain Existence".

Again, I worship this album. I mean, this has everything a devotee of "OSDM" generally looks for. There is thrashing old-school death galore, and more steamrolling doom-laden riffs than you can count. But it remains unique. Distinctly "proggy" at times, in their own peculiar, deformed way. Obvious comparisons can be made to the profoundly ominous, weirdly technical energy of early Morbid Angel and Incantation, but better reference points, albeit more aura than aural, is the equally hallucinatory death found in contemporary eccentrics Transgressor ( Ether for Scapegoat ) and early Atrocity (circa 1990's Hallucinations and 1992's Todessehnsucht). If those albums cast their spell on you, Cenotaph's debut is a recommended experience.

The Crypt's new vinyl reissue features classic black vinyl (in an edition of two hundred copies) alongside a super-limited edition of one hundred copies on "Ice Blue" vinyl, and includes a 12" by 12" lyric / photo insert and an 11" x 17" poster with a 2020 interview with the band on the back side.