Child Of Caesar – Spirit & Liberation

By RingMaster Review on September 14, 2022 • ( 0 )

Embroiling the senses and imagination in tenebrific realms where emotive dilemmas often verge on the baleful within its gloom and evocative sufferance, Spirit & Liberation is a gateway into one’s darkest depths. The new album from German metallers CHILD OF CAESAR is also one striking seduction and trespass of gothic metal bred but rapaciously varied sound which we suggest warrants the fullest attention.

CHILD OF CAESAR is the creation of guitarist André Marcussen; a project sowing its seeds in 2011 when he gathered an illustrious group of musicians including Autumn Eyes singer Daniel Mitchell to realise his dark provocative songwriting and creative vision. 2015 saw the release of the quickly embraced debut album Love In Black, its avant-garde gothic metal quickly attention stoking. Now with a line-up of vocalist Patrick Pagliaro (Slomind, Bunghole), bassist Tobias Habel (Slomind, Bunghole), guitarist Christopher F. Kassad (Ex-Jesus On Extasy, Aeranea) and drummer Felix Haun (Karabooza) alongside Marcussen, CHILD OF CAESAR have unveiled their sophomore full-length, the tempest of dark adventure that is Spirit & Liberation.

The band’s sound is a cauldron of emotive and sonic tension, creative intensity woven in multi-flavoured voracity. Dark and gothic metal entangle with blackened inclinations and punk rock dispute ensuring every song and indeed moment within their new release is shaped by invasive unpredictability and provocative surprise with its opener, Scorpions setting the tone and intent. The track, inspired by the 2015 attack by religious fanatics on the Bataclan club in Paris, immediately winds tense sonic wires around ears with an eruption of intensity in its tow before settling down into a nagging stroll. Even that though is a pyre of sound and trespass, Pagliaro’s vocals caustic against the melodic calm of keys which lie within the storm. It is a compelling start to the release, a dispute of sound and atmosphere provoking the senses and thoughts alike.

Your Eyes On Me settles upon ears next, a deliciously gnarly bassline drawing in instincts and within the song an equally rapacious web of riffs and rhythmic challenge. Its gothic metal air though is a haunting proposal, a Type O Negative hue colouring the sinister calm as Pagliaro’s sombre clean vocals captivate whilst proving his dextrous variety. The track is superb, a brewing tempest within casting melodic toxicity and evocative rumination before Lisa reveals its own cyclonic tension in a blackened seduction of tone and mercurial sound. As its predecessor, the song gripped our ears, its turbulence and invasive sound as multi-genre bred as its vocal and emotional breath is kaleidoscopic.

Climatic drama soaks Ritual Summer from its first second, the song slowly but forcibly invading and inciting with its disturbing and menacing presence bearing the humanity destroying inspirations of the summer of ’69 and the likes of the Manson murders and Vietnam War. A claustrophobic fusion of dark and black metal, the song is an intoxicating and toxic seduction while the greedily compelling Moon 24 weaves groove and alt metal incitement into its predatory appetite to equally tempt and consume.

Similarly Godchildren seriously tempted as it invaded, again a predator like feel escorting its feral but inescapable and ultimately addictive infectiousness with successor Seven exposing the band’s punk rock appetite with untamed and inescapably gripping ferocity. Bad Religion has been cited as a good reference to this shade of the CHILD OF CAESAR sound and very apt for the song’s pugilistic clamour as it cast another striking moment within the album.

With Native Tongue also tangling punk intent in its dark and melodic metal breeding, a hardcore essence fuelling its anxiety, and B.M.T.C. equally weaving its individuality with a like sourced mix of flavouring, discontent and dispute, the album just grew more striking and impressive with Exitus unleashing the most ferocious, debilitating and irresistible moment within Spirit & Liberation. The track is a pyre of punk animosity, extreme metal tenebrosity, and thrash voracity; proving the peak of many lofty highs within the release.

Closing with a doom soaked gothic take of SCOTT MACKENZIE’S classic song San Francisco, a track which personally surprised through its haunting and hypnotic persuasion, Spirit & Liberation had us enthralled and soon hungrily entangled in its impressive dramas and craft not forgetting its hungry kaleidoscope of sound and imagination. Fair to say we are not alone, the crowd and plaudits understandably growing by the day.

Spirit & Liberation is out now via Dr. Music Records; available @ www.dr-music-records.de