Band:	Black Bile
Album:	Cloacal Meditation
Style:	Atmospheric black metal, Funeral doom metal
Release date:	2006
A review by:	Lucas

01. Cloacal Meditation

Out of all places, Cyprus is not really the one I expect my Blackened Funeral Doom to come from. Personally I've never set foot on that island, but it's supposed to be pretty sunny over there. Once again, depression and misery prove to work in mysterious ways. After listening to Black Bile's first demo my heart aches to go there and see what could possibly evoke such succumbing emotions.

For now, I'll just stick to this wonderful piece of music. For a first demo, this is downright impressive. No less than twenty-eight minutes of some of the most eerie music ever to reach my tormented ears. A pitch-black and haunting twenty-eight minutes. As if you are struck by sudden blindness.

The most obvious influences of "Cloacal Meditation", the first and only song on the demo, are of course the likes of Wormphlegm, Senthil and Funeralium, pretty much the most known and respected bands in this alley of extreme doom.

A rotten filthiness, a general disgust towards life and all its contents, and a large cave. Three ingredients that make this a pure horror ride. Dissonant walls of reverbed riffs, crashing cymbals somewhere in the infinite cave of misanthropy in which we are all gathered. The agonizing screams of those who lost their path in the many dark corridors, and with their path, they gave away their pityful lives. They died of thirst and hunger, quite possibly attacked by some roaming abomination, now left to rot... their only legacy being their tormented schreeches, forever trapped in the obscurity of this hell.

And now, we regret decisions made long ago. We had the chance to spare ourselves this horrid ending. The warnings given were plenty, each subsequant admonition more convincing than the last. It all did not matter. The one-way tunnel, bleak and terrifying in its simplicity, was not enough. The rotting breath, the teethless deathlike smile of the tunnel did us no good, but we went on. The final warning we did not heed: "Come hither Brother, take your place, gnaw on thy flesh, let thy mind sink in His sacred filth..."

Our minds could not focus on anything else. An animalistic desire had taken control of us, a transcending craving led us to our doom. We had to pay. With our lives.