The Dying Truth

Chicago had been the epicentre of death metal back in 1985. There was a greater concentration of death metal bands in Illinois than anywhere else in the world. This includes famous bands like Master and Deathstrike, along with lesser known names like Terminal Death and Devastation. All these bands would later influence death metal scenes on both sides of the Atlantic. Death metal exploded, and the nexus of creativity moved to Florida and Stockholm. The Chicago scene produced some notable bands throughout the next decade, but not as many as you might expect given its importance early on.

Cianide were one of the most notorious bands from the 1990s Chicago scene. They played a no-frills style of death metal with similarities to earlier bands like Master and Celtic Frost (but much heavier). Parts of their debut album ("The Dying Truth") could be labelled 'death/doom', albeit in its simplest form. There are passages here that sound like My Dying Bride's debut album (which was released at around the same time). The atmosphere Cianide creates on this album is as thick and hazy as anything from the period. The musicianship is more rudimentary than most death metal bands, but this isn't necessarily a criticism. The band were uninterested in competing in the speed/complexity Olympiad that consumed many of their American death metal peers.

A record like "The Dying Truth" may have seemed somewhat dated back in 1992. This simple bludgeoning wasn't going to stand-out next to the flashier death metal acts of the time. This can work in the band’s favour when listening to it nowadays though, and the record has aged relatively well. Most of these songs on this album come from the band’s demos. Five of them have been re-recorded from their second demo, and one song has been taken from their first demo ("Funeral"). Cianide were confident enough in their old material to include almost every single one of their old songs on this album. There are two new tracks ("Scourging at the Pillar" and "Crawling Chaos"), which are sandwiched in the middle of the running order.

Most of the album is sludgy, primitive, slow death metal. The music has presence and authenticity, though it can get a little repetitive and one-dimensional. There is a section in "Mindscrape" that follows the same pattern for longer than seems necessary. The structure of this section is four bars ending in a fill, repeated over and over. The lack of variation in the drum fills can cause the song to drag. Other songs use faster tempos. This sounds good sometimes because it provides relief from the relentless slowness ("Human Cesspool" is a good example). Elsewhere, the band's lack of tightness catches them out when they play fast, such as on the title track, which is less convincing.

“The Dying Truth” is a reasonable death metal album from a well-respected band. I don't rate this record as highly as I rate similar doomy death metal records by Autopsy or My Dying Bride. I also think bands like Asphyx and Rippikoulu had better riffs and songs than Cianide. The lack of distinctive songs on this album might limit its broader appeal, it limits my enjoyment of the album to an extent. Still, there is enough substance and brooding menace here to keep me interested, and this record has a killer production. Recommended, once you've heard all the better stuff out there.

I guess back in the day old school death metal was just…death metal. At some indeterminate point in the early 2000s it came to refer to artists at work roughly between the years of 1985 to 1993, who made a name through type trading and zines. More recently still some metalheads have revisited our history for another dose of revisionism. OSDM can now refer to a certain primitive style of death metal. More a vague ideology than any identifiable musical properties. A DIY ethic, dirty production, artwork that champions the traditional gore or morbidity aesthetic, nothing too abstract or philosophical.

It’s death metal’s equivalent of homespun charm, traditional values, nothing too fancy or out there: if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, dick in a vagina, meat and two veg, I know what I like and I like what I do. By this logic, modern artists are sometimes tagged OSDM if they tick enough of these boxes. But setting this aside for now, here's an artist that both lived and worked the old school sound, and still does to this day. They are what I like to think of as the workhorses or powerhouses of death metal. Nothing too fancy, but material of consistency and quality that is worth celebrating.

Away from the noise and fanfare surrounding Scott Burns’ Morrisound Studios in Florida, the well-oiled machine of hardcore infused NYC death metal, and the d-beat energy of Swedish Sunlight Studios alumni, sat Chicago; and a set of artists producing primitive, grim, and eerie death metal in a world of its own. Death/doom metallers Cianide remain a cult classic among the faithful, but existed in the shadows of their universally adored piers Autopsy. The first LP ‘The Dying Truth’ released in 1992 remains a decent slab of primitive old school death metal by anyone’s standards.

Production is lo-fi as fuck, with deep fuzzy guitars working their way through simple atonal riffs. The full depth of the bass drum does not quite come through on the finished product, so to compensate the snare has been lased with excessive reverb, as a result it does not cut through the mud of the guitars in the same as say Winter did on ‘Into Darkness’. However, their distant, consistent rhythms call to mind a funeral procession of sorts, as many of the rhythms settle around a lackadaisical marching pace. Rarely do the drums pick up the tempo, and when they do it feels like a mad scramble to finish when contrasted with the melo rhythms that make up the bulk of this material.

Vocals are of the low end guttural growl of death metal, which is ideally suited to this music. This is minimal death metal, sluggish but not slow enough to be considered full doom metal. It adds a certain solitude to the music which is rare in death metal, which is nothing if not energetic most of the time. The music is basic, with dirgey, funereal riffs underplayed by these distant cavernous drums, lending the music an end-of-life feel more profound than the typical violence of Cianide’s peers. One could almost call it necro death metal, so accomplished is this release in evoking death and the dead in the mind of the listener.

But this approach would prove to be overly subtle, not enough to propel Cianide to the global fame that they deserved. The obscure intrigues of this release are atypical of death metal, but the tempo is often too upbeat to be considered doom, even though the atmosphere of ‘The Dying Truth’ is probably closer to funeral doom than any death metal that was released at the same time.

This represents something of a lost art in death metal, an understated, creepy approach that save for a few underground artists has rarely been mimicked in recent years. When the mood is right, and night has fallen, there is a unique appeal to ‘The Dying Truth’, but because of its bespoke charms it failed to make an impact beyond the faithful.

Originally published for: Hate Meditations

Though they've never seemed to accrue the same level of cult respect and admiration as other death/doom luminaries like Asphyx or Autopsy, the Chicago mobsters Cianide nonetheless earned their spot in extreme metal history for the thuggish, abusive atrocities they have committed. Mindless of the shifting landscape of death around them into the 90s, when progression took the shape of increasing complexity and percussive brutality, the band continue to churn out some of the most minimal, laconic and low end dirt in the medium. Minor alterations in production across their catalog, or slight surges in riffing technique, did little to veil the fact that Cianide DEFINES old school in all its actions, and doesn't give a whit about the repercussions.

Granted, I've never been the biggest follower of the group, but their 1992 debut The Dying Truth is probably that which I remembered most, ever since happening upon the cassette in the city, on one of many second hand scavenges I took to take advantage of the compact disc usurper so in vogue. Who could forget the sick cover artwork, a skeletal arbiter of oblivion absorbing the stripped and damned dead into its wings and limbs? Well, thanks to Deathgasm records, the album is returning to us in its most comprehensive form yet, a CD release that features both of the band's early demos (Funeral 1990 and Second Life 1991) as bonus content, and a track order rearranged to the band's original wishes. Sort of like a 'directors cut', the cut being a meat cleaver across the fleshy pulp of your throat.

Cianide's sound consists of little more than the most base of ingredients for the genre. A copious, swollen guitar tone is molded into chugging, slow to mid gait passages which crunch along below the surprisingly polished mix of the drums, while they also breach a few of those down-tuned grooves that were so huge on the Bolt Thrower records of the late 80s. Through the years I've also been found some parallels between this album and the first few Obituary records; they have that same knack for the stripped weight and authenticity of the riffs building atmosphere all to themselves. Also, in that those pure doom grooves that permeate the zombie marches present in tunes like "Mindscrape" and "Funeral" trace their lineage back to Hellhammer, a course the Floridians also pursued.

The primary difference is that Mike Perun's vocals don't have that same necrotic scrawl to them as Tardy, this is more of a straight blunt guttural in the vein of Karl Willetts or Chris Reifert's lower pitch, and the result is often one of relative monotony, since so many of the intonations feel similar in delivery. Don't mistake me here, the vocals are 100% suited to the drudging certainty of the songs, but what I've always found lacking on The Dying Truth was a strong sense of variation. Dynamically speaking, there are different tempos here, but the whole 42 minutes and eight tracks of the experience often seem rather narrow in scope, and though the crushing force of the guitars is in of itself 'heavy', there is a distinct lack of truly sinister sounding chord progressions throughout the writing.

This is due largely to the net dearth of melody and atmosphere throughout the writing. A few throwaway lead lines exist in tunes like "Mindscrape", but as a whole the momentum seems reliant far too heavily on the rhythm guitar chugging. A few eerie melodies, even just a handful of notes strung out upon the burgeoning chords like a chill mist on a graveyard would have gone a long way to deepening the experience, and maybe a few more points at which the bass lines would break free of the oppressive guitars. But, that being said, The Dying Truth is still quite sure of itself, comfortable enough in its no-gimmick formula to slowly raise and descend its spiked bludgeon over your head like a practiced neanderthal executioner. A successful disc, if not as staggeringly evil or tyrannical sounding as a Mental Funeral, Realm of Chaos or Cause of Death.

The demos are a very sweet bonus, as they let you trace the trio's path to the debut and Grind Core signing. Funeral is the rougher of the pair, the guitars sped up a little and thrashier sounding than on the full-length, but Second Life is pretty close in quality, only a bit fuzzier due to the recording. Granted, there are plenty of redundancies since most of these songs were also on the album, but the band does include an unreleased track called "Morbid Restitution" which had appeared previously only on a rare comp in 2006, and this has more of a tremolo picked, raw death metal feel to it of the Death and Master persuasion. All told, the bonus content adds enough value to make this the de facto version of the record for newer fans to check out.

Cianide might not have had the same impact on me in their heyday as fellow US sickos like Autopsy or Incantation; but especially today, when so many younger groups are stumbling over themselves to live out the nostalgia of a period they missed, cracking the doors of the crypts open to experience the 80s and 90s as fully as possible, I feel as if the Chicago veterans (still keeping busy, by the way) certainly warrant another listen. Make this yours.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

"Criminally underrated" is probably the first thing to come to mind when I think of the band Cianide. The next thing I think of is this album, and how it's a really crushing death metal record. Cianide took most of the main ingredients to death metal, leaving out the factor of speed for most of the album. This gave birth to a gem of a death metal album that stands out amongst the crowd of a time, rich in great death metal. It's a damn shame that no one is talking about this band anymore, because this album really does something unique with death metal.

So, much like Autopsy, Cianide does the whole "death metal meets Sabbath" idea. This immediately brings up some lesser done ideas, as now blast beats are no longer the beat of choice here. Instead, tempos are kept in a relaxed yet solid groove. Double bass thumps through appropriate sections, while the bass rides along with it, and the guitars open up. Many of the riffs change from open strums to tremolo in progression, and end up opening more options in terms of song arrangement. In other words, when Cianide wants to play slow, they really make it feel slow.

Everything in this band fits together well. The production is completely appropriate as it focuses more on the low side of things, allowing for true heaviness to occur. The bass drums have a great thump as stated, the bass is thick and pulsating, and the vocals are low and evil sounding. Not to mention a deadly guitar tone. It just literally sounds like these guys were made to play slow.

The phrasing in the riffs are relatively simple but sound daunting and perhaps even abysmal. Power chord progressions with different textures and strum patterns come up, or sometimes just simple droning of chords allows for various moods to be expressed.

The best part about this album is that every song is full of parts that stand out, so there's always something that grabs you for every song. For example, "Minscrape" features a good snare pattern in a beat. "Second Life" features some well thought out vocal patterns that stick out well. The title track contains the fastest section on the whole album, and it isn't even a blast beat (but still has some velocity). Little things like that appear all over the album, and are unique to each song, which helps it define itself.

This album is a classic, and anyone who considers themselves a fan of good death metal should hunt it down one way or another. I personally think it's a gem and established a very distinct style of death metal that's done just right. This is the best Cianide disc without question. Cianide is still a great band today (and consistent), but, this manages to stand above the rest.