Artist: CULTED
Album: OBLIQUE TO ALL PATHS (DIGI)

Year: 2014
Media type: CD

CULTED’s story is a unique one:  Since forming in 2007, the four band members have never actually been in the same room. Spread out over multiple countries and continents, they come together through the wonders of modern technology to create totally compelling top of the line doom. Michael Klassen (guitar/bass/percussion/noise), Matthew Friesen (guitar/bass/percussion/noise) and Kevin Stevenson (drums) all grew up in a small town in the middle of the Canadian prairies, while Daniel Jansson (vocals/ambience) makes his home in Gothenburg, Sweden.
 
After hearing Jansson’s Deadwood project, Klassen contacted him through his MySpace page to see if he'd be interested in collaborating on his and Friesen's other band, Of Human Bondage. While emailing back and forth, the guys discovered they had mutual interests in groups like Khanate, Sunn O))) and Electric Wizard and Jansson suggested they put together a whole new project of slow, blackened metal. By recording and sending files from different parts of the world, the band was able to assemble and unleash their first album, Below the Thunders of the Upper Deep, in 2009.
 
Now, the band is preparing to put forth their second full-length album, “Oblique To All Paths”. While CULTED’s writing and recording process may be unusual, and a story unto itself, it certainly should not overshadow what this band has accomplished---creating a bleak and epic masterpiece of dystopian doom. The album has received praise for its wide ranging vision and stunning execution, with The Obelisk noting its innovation and calling it “a work of darkly sublime genius”. All Music Guide asserts that the bleak, oppressive tones make "a fitting soundtrack for a post-apocalyptic landscape of ruin." Cinematic in its scope, ‘Oblique To All Paths’ is a beautifully haunting and grim piece of sprawling doom metal—the perfect soundtrack to a desolate, barren winter.

Recommended if You Like: Winter, Unearthly Trance, Cough, Yob, Sunn0))) ...

TRACKLIST:

1. Brooding Hex
2. Illuminati
3. Intoxicant Immuration
4. March of the Wolves
5. Distortion of the Nature of Mankind
6. Transmittal
7. Jeremiad