Cave Sermon - Fragile Wings - review
Cave Sermon - Fragile Wings - review
Tracklist
01. Hopeless Magic02. Arrows And Clay
03. Moloch
04. Three-Headed Moth
05. Sunless Morning
06. Ancient For Someone
A review by
musclassia April 21, 2025
First, Fragile Wings was a surprise purely in how it was released midweek without any apparent advance warning. Second, things are different on the personnel front compared with last year; while Cave Sermon’s 2021 debut Memory Spear was all-instrumental, Park recruited Mico’s Miguel Méndez to lay vocals down on Divine Laughter, but Fragile Wings is back to a fully solo effort as Park tries his hand at vocals. Finally, while it should be expected that a record as versatile, wide-ranging and unpredictable as Divine Laughter would not be followed by an album that sounded exactly like it, it’s nonetheless remarkable to witness the evolution that has occurred in under 18 months.
We placed Divine Laughter in the Avantgarde / Experimental Metal category in the most recent Metal Storm Awards, mainly due to the insurmountable challenge of trying to pigeonhole the record’s blend of black, sludge, disso-death, progressive and post-metal into any one individual category. These various constituent styles can all be detected again this time around, but arguably one can recognize some form of foundation laid within post-metal that the other extreme metal styles are piled upon. This perhaps lends the record an extra degree of approachability compared with its predecessor (also because it shies away from including the harsh noise that appeared in the latter stages of Divine Laughter), but this is by no means a simple or easily accessible listen.
Park slots into the vocal role fairly naturally; compared with the deep gutturals of Méndez, his mid-register growls (which tend to lurk quite deep in the mix) perhaps more naturally pair up with the lighter tones that come through in the expansive, almost airy opener “Hopeless Magic”. The song opens with post-metallic tom drums and clean textures, and later on weaves a few different forms of melody into the mix (solos, tremolo layers, guitar motifs), but the riffing when it gets truly going, without ever really exploding out the speakers, goes in more of a post-black direction. The writing on the song has a progressive slant, and also retains the use of dissonance from the debut, albeit in lesser quantities and prominence.
The next track, “Arrows And Clay”, arguably pushes the post-metal elements further at times, with some soaring post-rock tremolos and melancholic arpeggiated guitar textures, but at the same time it at least initially ups the ante extremity-wise, incorporating a healthy dose of blast beats alongside some more jagged riffing. Nevertheless, “Arrows And Clay” might be a high water mark across Fragile Wings in terms of outright sorrowful melody. In contrast, “Moloch” is almost outright euphoric in a few brief moments around its middle as some shining chords ascend, before it plunges into dissonant brutality; said brutality is short-lived, as there’s another sudden about-face for the light, almost playful closing minutes to the track.
There was no one obvious to compare Divine Laughter to, and the same is much the case for Fragile Wings; in terms of sludge-associated bands with a capacity for violence but also quirky melodic off-shoots, one could perhaps look at Inter Arma, but while Divine Laughter sometimes plunged to those depths of extremity, this new record never really reaches the same point. Probably the closest it gets is some of the janky death metal riffs in “Three-Headed Moth”, but even that song regularly contrasts its harshest tendencies with lighter dissonant textures or outright fun Southern rock-inspired guitar licks.
Fragile Wings is just about recognizable as coming from the same artist behind Divine Laughter, but the change in approach is radical enough that a fan of one album isn’t destined to automatically enjoy the other. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoy both; this is a really creative and original release with a lot of range and charm, and while it doesn’t quite have the knockout factor of last year’s release, it’s further testament to Charlie Park’s talent and versatility, confirming him as one of the standout emerging artists in underground metal.
Written on 21.04.2025 by
Written on 21.04.2025 by
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