Review & Full Album Premiere: Cavern Deep, Part II – Breach
This Friday, Swedish conceptualist doomers Cavern Deep will release their second full-length, Part II – Breach, through their own Bonebag Records imprint. Beginning with its title-track, the follow-up to the band’s 2021 Interstellar Smoke-released self-titled debut (review here) offers epic doom with Candlemassian fluidity and grace of riff and a marked attention to atmosphere that splays out across the 46 minutes of the album-proper, a total runtime that’s brought to 58:49 when the bonus track “The Attuning” (premiered here) is considered.
The Umeå-based DIY-recording three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Kenny-Oswald Duvfenberg, bassist/vocalist Max Malmer and drummer/keyboardist/backing vocalist Dennis Sjödin recorded Part II – Breach in 2021, reporting that it was finished even as they were still making videos for the debut. In addition to the multimedia presentation of that initial LP — two video series were made; one of the band performing the songs live and a set of lyric clips to focus on the narrative aspect of the work — Cavern Deep offered covers of Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa (posted here) and Philip Glass (premiered here), and showed a readiness to reach beyond themselves and to build on what the first record established as their sound. They do exactly that, bolstered by guest appearances from Susie McMullan of San Francisco’s Brume, guitarist Johannes Behndig of Umeå prog 
instrumentalists Sarcophagus Now, and Monolord‘s Thomas V. Jäger on the aforementioned “The Attuning.”
A certain rough stateliness suits “Breach” and the album that follows it. The story — detailed by the band below — ends at the beginning with “The Attuning” bringing the character of ‘the archaeologist’ to an unceremonious conclusion before “Primordial Basin” picks up from the opener’s slowed-down-the-already-slow-nod ending and brings McMullan‘s contribution on vocals. Slow-rolling and churning, down, down, down goes “Primordial Basin” until it quiets for the verse, sparse noise from even deeper in the mix than the whole song seems to be around the two-minute mark. McMullan‘s echoing delivery, swaying and sad at first and growing more forceful as the song shifts back to its weightier riff and oozes through a midsection that’s a whole-album highlight. The burner of a guitar solo that leads into the duet crescendo returns after and Cavern Deep make their way through the feedback and into the ambient start of “A World Bereaved,” which feels even more lurching.
Multi-tracked vocals at the outset — I think it’s Duvfenberg and Malmer both in the initial verse, then the latter over the quieter stretch — are placed well after “Primordial Basin,” and “A World Bereaved” is even more patient in its unfurling. The full-volume lumber comes back as they move through the song’s middle, but their willingness to dwell in that minimal space for as long as they do underscores the growth they show in craft, even as they recorded concurrent to the first release. Suitably morose, “A World Bereaved” seems to collapse shortly before hitting six minutes into its total 8:42, with the guitar, bass and drums working into a dark-blue psychedelia, an organ solo presumably from Sjödin distinguishing the piece soon answered by howling guitar. There’s no comedown as they stop cold, but some residual feedback cuts off as the energy-kick chug of “Skeletal Wastes” starts, the silence there used to give it all the more of a bursting feel.
“Skeletal Wastes” is also the assumed start of the vinyl’s side B, and the faster tempo helps build momentum as the trio plunge deeper into the storyline. Behndig has his appearance in the song’s second half, playing an effects-laced lead over steady bass and drums that grow more insistent as keyboard is added and a rhythm that reminds of King Buffalo‘s “The Knocks” subtly enters beneath the swath of effects and/or synth floating around the ceiling of the mix. Some pointed thuds cap, as they will, and “Sea of Rust” indeed begins with wave samples ahead of jumping into its lead-topped intro, which returns to the classic doom feel of “Breach” itself. As with the opener, “Primordial Basin” and “A World Bereaved,” “Sea of Rust” has a break in its first half, but also as with the others, it is distinct sonically — that is, even when following a similar structure, Cavern Deep are mindful in shifting sounds — and it grows especially grim as it turns into its chanting-esque middle, the subsequent solo and key melody fading out long and churning, viscous, mournful.
That aura hopelessness mirrors where the story is at that point — a dead world — and sets up the resonant melody that tops the drawn-out doom of “The Pulse” as McMullan returns for a corresponding vocal spot on side B. It’s the shortest inclusion on Part II – Breach at 6:23, but feels like an arrival nonetheless, and while the lyrics aren’t necessarily narrating the action taking place in the material — that is, there’s no “the engineer goes here and does this or sees this dead thing”; the presentation is more obscure, impressionistic — the endpoint of the journey is 
enhanced by synth over a procession of sorrowful guitar, bass and drums, a definitely doomed but not entirely lightless void carried through the last March. Shades of later Type O Negative in the guitar tone give over to a sustained synth note that concludes. And “The Attuning” is pure slog, a riff righteously slow covered with a screaming solo setting the stage for Jäger‘s vocals later and bringing Part II – Breach down like the tape ran out just as they wrapped up, which for all I know is how it went.
After an ambitious first record, an ambitious second. Cavern Deep very obviously came out of Cavern Deep with a clear idea of what they thought worked and what they wanted to try to expand on, and Part II – Breach does that, while branching off in terms of narrative in such a way as to let it stand apart from its predecessor, so one doesn’t necessarily need to have heard the self-titled to understand where they’re coming from now. Or two years ago, anyway, since that’s when it was recorded. Foremost, Part II – Breach finds Cavern Deep digging — pun absolutely intended — further into their take, and emerging with an all-the-more individual sound for it. I don’t know where the story is headed from here, or if it’s done or what, but for the band itself, they still seem to be just getting started realizing their potential.
Part II – Breach streams in full, followed by a track-by-track explanation of where the songs bring the narrative. Note, these are not the lyrics, which you can find in the image above if you zoom in and squint hard.
Please enjoy:
Cavern Deep’s new record “Part II – Breach” is out July 14 on all platforms. CD and Vinyl are distributed by Bonebag Records.
Breach is Cavern Deep’s second album. It is, just as the first album a concept album which follows the story of the first.
The synopsis is as follows:
1. Breach
The archaeologist is no more. Engulfed.
As the ungodly withering sentinel feasts on his flesh and mind, something is opening.
Picked up by a violent current, the bare essence of the man is plunged through the strange spaces in between worlds.
It is reshaped. Traveling in its primal form with the monstrous being as a conduit. Its heart is blank. Mind is void.
2. Primordial Basin
She is watching patiently.
The engineer.
The last of its kind.
The theft of this essence from the otherworldy refuge was the final attempt.
Embedded in the being below her is the code.
Her design.
Her revenge.
Deep down in the basin, the putrid water stirs as the being breaks free from its membranous nursery.
The engineer watches in silent triumph from afar as the being destroys everything in its path in blind newborn rage.
Wading through the festering amniotic fluid it is pulled by an inner voice to the east.
3. A World Bereaved
No more memories of its earlier existence than glitching, flickering images.
Like waking up from distant clouded nightmares. Skin is thin, sore, still growing as it lumbers
through desolate landscapes. No signs of life to be seen. The ground is torn by sickly pulsating spirals,
shooting up in the thick clouds above. Passing former displays of architectural grandeur;
now caved in like hollow skulls. A sense of purpose is shaping inside as it finds its paths through the wasteland.
4. Skeletal Wastes
Before it, an ancient war ground.
It is vast and dreadful to behold. The last big battle of a dying civilization.
The last gasping breath.
The being makes its way through labyrinths of giant dead abominations and remnants of war machines
since long put to sleep. Picking up pace. Slowly burning from inside with an ever-growing sense of meaning.
It is the final solution. The retaliation of many. The faint glow in its veins extends to a cord.
The hovering placenta is feeding it in a steady rhythm, preparing the being for its passing.
5. Sea of Rust
The Sea. Dead.
Acidic.
This is ground zero.
It knows all.
It was here above the greatest of cities they broke through.
Drawn by the greed of kings and queens and their ever-growing thirst for the primal energy beyond their realm.
It was they who forced the few remaining to take refuge in a distant cold world, destined to wither away in
subterranean darkness. Everything is lost. Sunken. All but rust. The engineer gives up a sigh as she from afar
witnesses the being floating above the red watery mass towards the pulsating rift at the horizon.
It is starting to shed.
6. The Pulse
This is it.
The release.
The soothing of the inner ache.
The organic matter is peeled off layer by layer as the being passes the rift.
The glowing orb withers away and sinks into the sea.
The pulsating passage lays bare.
It is liquid.
Lethal.
Bodiless.
It is ready.
They are doomed.
7. The Attuning (bonus track)
At the end of his cavernous quest the archaeologist forfeit his life and slowly becomes one with the ungodly usurper.
His mind is suddenly touched from afar.
A distant wave snags him from the void currently closing around him, throwing the leftovers of his scattered essence into turmoil.
Into the stream.
Becoming something else.
Cavern Deep is:
Kenny-Oswald Duvfenberg – Guitars and Vocals
Max Malmer – Bass and Vocals
Dennis Sjödin – Drums, Backup Vocals and Keys
[…] The album recently premiered via The Obelisk and can be found here! […]