Band:	Culted
Album:	Nous
Style:	Blackened doom metal
Release date:	February 2021

01. Lowest Class
02. Lifers
03. One Last Smoke
04. Ankle Deep
05. Black Bird
06. Opiate The Hounds
07. Maze
08. Crown Of Lies
09. The Grid
10. Crush My Soul [Godflesh cover]

The word 'nous' means 'mind' or "intellect" in Greek. Culted's Nous plays with your mind in the most immersive, frightening, introspective, and nihilistic way.

Culted is a very interesting case of a band with three of the members living in Canada, and their vocalist located in Sweden. The four of them have never actually been in the same room together but that doesn't prevent them from delivering some of the most cohesive and compelling blackened doom in the metal scene. And blackened doom is a term that feels - and indeed is - very restrictive when describing Culted's sludgy sound because they also have a cold, industrial component, and they often resort to droney and ambient soundscapes.

The lyrics of this album are pure poetry for the tortured souls. I am not exaggerating one bit, Nous has some of the most psychologically challenging lyrics I have read in a long time and they go hand in hand with the largely unsettling music. The voice spewing these lyrics forth is also tremendous; Daniel Jansson's blackened rasps, haunting chants, demented spoken word, and ritualistic murmurs evoke a uniquely eerie feeling.

According to the press release, Nous was born after difficult personal experiences involving disease and death, and the subsequent existential crises, and I can safely say that Culted have achieved to convey all that into this album. Nous has such a devastating character, it feels like a homage to the despair of existence itself. Even the cover art is a stunning piece of work; it is an interpretation by surrealist painter Ettore Aldo Del Vigo of the Temptation of Saint Anthony, who was one of the first monks to retire to the desert to devote himself to fasting and prayer, and the supernatural temptation reportedly faced by him is an often-repeated subject in the history of art and literature.

The sound of Nous is filthy, dirty, unclean. The music feels like Godflesh and Swans covering Neurosis songs. It is a doom dirge that is everchanging like a snake shedding its skin over and over. The melodic parts are scarce and they are as twisted as possible. The synths are disturbing and creepy. Culted's doom metal travels through sludgy swamps ("Lowest Class"), industrial wastelands ("Lifers"), discordant landscapes ("One Last Smoke"), groovy labyrinths ("Maze"), and droney, blood-soaked paths ("Crown Of Lies"), dragging the listener deeper and deeper into the abyss as it goes along. It is a horrifying journey whose first part is relatively more accessible, but the further you go into the album the more it sucks you in, and its second part is almost devoid of any hooks (with the exception of "Maze"), so it becomes more and more uncomfortable. The Godflesh cover that closes the record - with guest appearance from Crowhurst's Jay Gambit - is absolutely breathtaking and gives credit where credit is due.

Nous is a psychological endurance test. It's pure agony. It brings discomfort. It is emotionally draining. Its atmosphere is suffocating. But it draws you in, you feel like you want to keep coming back to it despite its ugliness. And it is a personal affair. I have to admit that it is not for everyone, and you have to be in a certain state of mind (or 'nous') and in the right mood to take it all in. It is so epic in scope and scale that it can feel overwhelming but, if you join this cult, there is no way back from it.

"One last drink to ease the pain. One last smoke to burn the lung".