Cabal – ‘Magno Interitus’ [Album Review]

Having released their utterly devastating Drag Me Down album in 2020, I remember seeing Danish crew Cabal talk the talk as they sledgehammered their way through a thirty-minute set supporting Lorna Shore on the US deathcore faves’ UK headline tour earlier this year. Well, here we are about eight months later, and the Danes are back with the absolutely monstrous follow-up Magno Interitus and, listening to the record, it’s clear that they’ve learned from that tour that everything bigger and heavier is definitely better.

Yes, the core of what the Scandinavian crew is about is still pummelling deathcore, but there is something so much more disturbing and savage about tracks like “Magno Interitus.” From the way they lumber through some brutal breakdowns to the swathes of industrial electronics, the sinister air given off shows a band who have picked apart their sound and amped the whole thing up before reassembling the individual parts. Reminiscent of Thy Art Is Murder at their most bleak, singer Andreas Bjulver Paarup has said of the recording that “the main theme on the album is the great decay happening all around us” and, hearing the ferocity unleashed on tracks like “Violent Ends,” you can feel the despair pouring through.

In fact, while we’re on the subject of “Violent Ends,” it might be a good time to reference the band’s use of almost industrial, machine-like effects to add something cold and clinical to their distorted, crushing sound. However, before that, there are plenty of moments throughout Magno Interitus where the band has explored outside the boundaries of what they describe as “their safe sound.” Take “Blod af Mit,” for example, where the band really twists their metallic ferocity around a bed of unnerving industrial sounds. Be warned, though, when we’re talking industrial, we’re not talking Nine Inch Nails. No, Cabal has gone for the jugular by inviting dark, industrial duo John Cxnnor to create absolute musical misery.

The industrial twosome aren’t the only guests roped in by Cabal. With Joe ‘Bad’ Badolato of Fit For An Autopsy joining the band on the title track and Simon Olsen from fellow Dane heavyweights Baest adding his own brand of vocal filth to the punishing “Insidious,” you can’t accuse the guys of not pulling out all the stops for this one. By the time they wrap the album up with “Plague Bringer,” Cabal brings to a close this savage album with one final sanity-shattering swansong.

Magno Interitus Track Listing:

1. If I Hang, Let Me Swing
2. Insidious
3. Magno Interitus
4. Existence Ensnared
5. Insatiable
6. Blod af Mit
7. Exit Wound
8. Violent Ends
9. Like Vultures
10. Exsanguination
11. Plague Bringer

Run Time: 35:37
Release Date: October 21, 2022
Record Label: Nuclear Blast Records