Colosseum - Chapter 1: Delirium Review
by Mark Hensch
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With 2007's Chapter 1: Delirium, Finland's remarkably young Colosseum craft less an album and more a descent into gibbering madness. Perfectly earning its subtitle of Delirium, Chapter 1 is a frightening yet mesmerizing sojourn through realms of incomprehensible cosmic horror. Drawing equally from the vast insanity of the Lovecraft mythos and the esoteric mysticism of the Middle-East, Colosseum makes the slow decay into insanity sound more memorable or poignant than most bands coming before them.
The reason for this lies in Colosseum's interesting, fully-fledged sonic identity. In fact, for a band so young, Colosseum know quite well what they want from their own music. To my ears, Delirium combines the crushing funeral doom made popular by country-mates and genre originators Skepticism and Thergothon with the sweeping and melodic elegance of more straightforward doom/death bands like My Dying Bride, Swallow the Sun, or Anathema. Despite the shout-outs to these last few bands, make no mistake however---this is funeral doom, plain and painstakingly simple.
Opening cut "The Gate of Adar" begins with an unearthly, primal bellow not unlike Lovecraftian compatriots Catacombs. From here, crushing funeral doom plods hand-in-hand with forlorn, shimmering keys. Dark, melancholic keyboard melodies drift effortlessly through the mix, slowly propelling forward the bone-shattering riffs and keeping things interesting. After a bit of this, it soon becomes apparent that Colosseum are adept at conjuring up special guitar lines that hang ominously in the cold reaches of one's darkest segments of consciousness---these unique leads are both beautiful and terrible to behold. It is a dichotomy that frankly works wonders.
None of this lets up on "Corridors of Desolation," which in some ways is even more majestic than its predecessor. Instantly assaulting the eardrums with gargantuan layers of ethereal riffs and glimmering notes which snake through it all, "Desolation" is barren on its surface but wonderfully full past its initial appearance. Though some are quick to complain of funeral doom's so-called monotony, a song like this shows that there are tons of things going on here---the sparkling clean passages, the mechanical plod of drums, and the snail-like crawl of the fiery guitars. Hell, there is even a brief choir! It all comes together with an unbelievably huge smoothness one must hear to believe.
"Weathered" is about half-a-beat faster than the earlier material, its mildly less lethargic crawl giving off a sense of immense urgency. The leads are "spanning entire civilizations in the blink of an eye" epic and entirely memorable; meanwhile, the painfully slow rhythm section anchors things marvelously. Adding all these factors together one gets a winding funeral doom masterpiece that invokes images of understanding the complete and absolute nature of the universe for the first time.
After this, only a song entitled "Saturnine Vastness" really has a chance of conveying the scope and depth of Colosseum's sound. "Saturnine" gradually builds off mammoth chugs and grandiose washes of sounds into layered doom of the highest order. Be it the clever keyboard work leading one further into the maelstrom of crush, or the quietly roiling chaos beneath the stupendous size of the music itself, "Saturnine" is every bit as huge as its name suggests. Even better, if the first half of the song is its lift-off into the boundless regions of space, wait till about seven minutes in---the song embarks on a stunning amble through the stellar atmospheres of its cosmic keyboard tones only to go supernova and incinerate everything in sight.
Out of this holocaust comes the soft, even Pink-Floydian introduction to "Aesthetics of the Grotesque." "Grotesque" begins with soothing keyboards and tranced-out guitar plucking, the likes of which trickles deep into the depths of the Earth. Upon arriving in this foul abyss, the song busts out an annihilating waltz of elephantine funeral doom. Laced in a swath of star-flecked melancholy, the song is as mournful as it is vast in size.
Ending things is the creepy "Delirium." An eerie, half-dreamt clean guitar passage introduces things; from there, arguably the disc's most pummeling riffing occurs, laying waste to everything in sight. As it patiently descends into a sort of grim, deluded madness, "Delirium" leaves nothing untouched. It is almost unbearably dark and heavy, only mellowing out with a somber piano melody at song's eventual end. Fortunately for listeners, this "quiet" portion reverberates with legitimate heaviness regardless of down-tuning.
In closing, though there is much melody to be found on Delirium, both quiet and loud, never once is the disc anything less than totally heavy and absolutely soul-crushing. Delirium is a catchy, malevolent force, the likes of which is perpetuated by a surprisingly young band. I highly recommend it.
Colosseum's Chapter 1: Delirium
1. The Gate of Adar
2. Corridors of Desolation
3. Weathered
4. Saturnine Vastness
5. Aesthetics of the Grotesque
6. Delirium
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Colosseum - Chapter 1: Delirium Rating:9.0
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