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The Belgian death/doom band Cantar was
founded in 1994 by Ruben (vocals, guitar), Filip (guitars) and
drummer Kristof. This is also the backbone of the band nowadays. In
1997 their second demo ‘Beyond The Last Breath’ had been chosen to
‘demo of the year’ by a Belgian metal magazine. I remember their gig
at the Metal Bash Competition in 1999 at the Biebob, being rather
impressed by their performance with a great violin’s contribution.
These four years we have to go back to place ‘Lament’, but in the
meantime many things happened to Cantar. A bunch of line-up changes
delayed the recordings in the Motormusic studio.
Early this year the release of the
first CD happened to be a fact, so that we can enjoy 66 minutes of
doom/death music with influences from baroque and renaissance, which
is duly heard in a track called ‘Crimson Shades Called To The
Crypt’. One needs some courage to open a debut CD with an epic
monument of more than 30 minutes (containing three pieces of ten
minutes after all). But we can hear so much variation that you never
feel any boredom despite the length.
Of course also here My Dying Bride had
some smooth influences, but you can pick out worse veterans. Cantar
has a sound of its own, and that is because of the violin but
certainly because of the pipe organ. It was recorded at the
St-Kruiskerk in Lebbeke and it creates a multi-various
ecclesiastical atmosphere. At these moments it reminds me of classic
music, one minute later swept away by the power of an energetic
grunt of Ruben, absorbed by blast beats of flogging drums and riffs.
There are many exquisite moments of beauty, breaks with violin,
spoken fragments, keyboards, acoustic guitars, all followed by a
turbulent tempo (‘Carpe Mortem’ has some death/black passages). With
all these changing moods Cantar demands some patience and devoted
attention from the listener. Sometimes they have avant-gardistique
characteristics. The elegant violin is played by Saskia Swalus. A
must for the critical heavy doom/death adept! |
