CLAUSTRUM - "Claustrum" 12" Vinyl LP

Imported from Unorthodox Emanations (Italy)

2nd Press (2024)
Limited to 250
Bone White Vinyl

This debut album from Italian newcomers CLAUSTRUM was easily one of the best of the death metal albums I heard in 2023. In fact it blew me away when I first heard it on cassette (thanks to Night Terrors Records). I missed out on the first press of the vinyl but thankfully it was recently repressed courtesy of Unorthodox Emanations (a sub-label of Avantgarde Music).

I truly cannot recommend this album enough. I would put it up there with the best OSDM revival albums from seasoned bands like Undergang, Mortiferum, and Krypts. It's crushingly heavy with loads of atmosphere, great production, and memorable sognwriting. A+++++ DEATH METAL!!!!!

Claustrum is an old school death metal trio born someplace between Trieste and Gorizia, in north-eastern Italy, featuring members from Grime, Affliction Vector, Fierce and Dromme, all brought together by a feral passion for the death metal of old. Drawing their inspiration from sci-fi, horror, authors like Poe and Lovecraft and the misery of human existence, in their debut, self-titled album Claustrum delivers some crypt-reeking, disturbing death metal, heralding the impending Apocalypse.

The Latin word Claustrum stands for a thin sheet of gray matter that connects to cortical and subcortical regions. It is considered the most interconnected structure within the telencephalon, that allows for the integration of multiple cortical stimuli, such as visual, acoustic and tactile. It is commonly considered the area of ​​the human brain where the soul resides.

But Claustrum is also an enclosed space, a fence, a prison. As the band explained: “Claustrum to us also means separation from the rest of the world. The record was born during a period of confinement due to the pandemic and for this reason it is above all an outlet, something authentic and spontaneous with which to release negative energies that have been compressed for too long. That's why during this separation for us it was paramount to rely on certainties. And those certainties are liturgies written by Autopsy, Asphyx, Death and Incantation”.