Band:	Cunabula
Album:	The Weight Of Sleep
Style:	Post black metal, Atmospheric sludge metal
Release date:	August 11, 2023
A review by:	musclassia

01. Bruxa
02. Drown To Become Water
03. We Are The Prey
04. The Weight Of Sleep
05. Silent Somber Suns
06. Sh'eenaz

Cunabula’s debut album The Weight Of Sleep has some of same unpredictability and inconsistency as many of my dreams; however, while imperfect, there’s some very decent material worth exploring here.

Coming 6 years after their first release, the 2017 EP Scar, Lithuania’s Cunabula have created a record that has clearly had a lot of thought and deliberation put into it within those years. The group do get tagged with the post-black label in the promo materials I can see for this album, which rather aligns with the other bands I know from Lithuania (Inquisitor, Au-Dessus, and to a lesser extent Erdve); I’ve no idea why post- and black metal are seemingly so prominent among Lithuanian metal bands, but the ‘black’ part does feel a bit of a stretch when describing The Weight Of Sleep.

There is some blackness to the first couple of songs here; after an off-kilter few minutes opening “Bruxa”, Cunabula unleash an onslaught of blasting and tremolo that finds a perfect balance between ominous and yet slightly uplifting, while “Drown To Become Water” opens with a slower riff that is rendered using chilled blackened tones. However, overall I would more consider this to be a sludge, prog and post-metal one; there’s plenty of beefy low-end riffs, convoluted song structures/time signatures and shifting dynamics. Not that that’s a bad thing in any way: the evolution of this album within and between songs is generally a strength, even if some moments don’t quite work.

To start with positives, I’m inclined to look at the bookending parts of The Weight Of Sleep. I’ve already briefly touched upon “Bruxa”, but it has some gnarly complex grooves earlier on, and the livelier passages, both in the middle with the disarming tone of the blackened midsection and towards the end with a frantically percussive yet bright-sounding climax, work well. “Drown To Become Water” features a well-executed quiet midsection, one where delicate clean guitar tones meander pleasantly above a muted jazzy underlying drum track in an ever so slightly Opethian manner, and the subsequent explosion of noise feels like a fitting pay-off.

Later on, the very prog-sludge “Silent Somber Suns” delivers probably the most well-rounded experience encountered on The Weight Of Sleep, as the quieter beginning, the slick riffing in the middle and big melodic soloing later on all work very well, both in isolation and together. The subtle use of clean vocals near the end on an otherwise scream-laden record is also a very nice touch, and “Sh’eenaz” also uses more prominent cleans quite well in a more eerie manner.

Still, I can’t open a review by mentioning inconsistencies and imperfections and not later discuss issues I have with an album, so it’s now time to direct one’s gaze towards the middle portion of the album. More than anything, the part of The Weight Of Sleep that I most feel holds it back is “We Are The Prey”, or more specifically its central riff; pretty much on every replay of this album, I’ve found myself cringing more and more when the awkward, hookless, repetitive riff and one-dimensional drum beat kicks off this song, and worse is that it is brought back on multiple occasions. The song overall isn’t entirely devoid of promise; there’s a more elaborately contorted riff that occurs later in the song during what I would loosely refer to as ‘the chorus’, and this actually hits pretty hard. It’s just far too much of this song is dedicated to a really unenjoyable and overly prolonged riff, and still more of its runtime is occupied by a fairly nothingy quiet segment.

The unsatisfying nature of this quiet segment is compounded by the 2.5-minute title track that immediately follows; aside from a few clean guitar notes, “The Weight Of Sleep” features minimalist ambient noise, and this might have worked better on the album if it wasn't occurring so soon after a similarly long minimalist section. I think the middle of The Weight Of Sleep somewhat lets it down; however, there’s also some roughness in the composition that affects the longer tracks here, particularly the slightly disjointed “Sh’eenaz”, which is somewhat rescued by having a pretty huge-sounding ending after some awkward and ill-fitting quieter and heavier segments in its first half. Additionally, while I wouldn’t say that the variety of sounds across the album reflects any indecision on the part of the band, I feel the ways in which they’re arranged do slightly hamper the record’s flow.

Overall, I’d say “Silent Somber Suns” and perhaps “Drown To Become Water” are the only songs here that feel truly rewarding as complete experiences; however, between them they account for 40% of the record’s runtime, and there are good moments in the remaining full songs, even in “We Are The Prey”. Cunabula clearly have talent, and manage to convert that talent into solidly enjoyable music for quite a bit of this debut’s runtime; they just need a bit more quality control of what ideas they incorporate, as well as refinement of how they incorporate them together within full songs, and album number two could be something fierce to be reckoned with.