For now and forever the bleak mirror of mortality encroaching, death’s surround, acts as thee inarguable and unstoppable agent of change. The body dies, sloughs off in a beautiful shedding sound and yet the willful among us insist that the mind would live on perturbed by a newfound sensation of skin yet relieved by its transformation, away from carapace and confinement. To the moon, to the light, and with eyes that glitter with intoxicated bemusement Cologne, Germany-borne progressive death metal inspired heavy rock trio Chapel of Disease looked everywhere they could, catching all available eyefuls of sentimental lustre before their corpus collapsed for the first time. ‘Echoes of Light‘ is the shroud of death falling and taking what may as the final form of the “Mark I” version of this band asks directly “Is this all there is?” followed by, no, “I don’t believe it.” as they proceed to search first the stars and then their souls before everything turns black.

Chapel of Disease formed as an ‘old school’ death metal trio (eventually a quartet) circa 2008 clearly inspired by the likes of Death and Bolt Thrower as the original quartet worked toward a certain standard that’d been noticed as F.D.A. Records (Rekotz at the time) were building their earliest momentum around ~2011 or so when many seriously talented still worshipped and studied the rhythms of thrashing death metal. You’ll hear the product of their first four years on ‘Summoning Black Gods‘ (2012) a debut that still has riffs, bears a fine set of death metal teeth and displays a fine understanding of canonical death metal. To some that sound was/is religion, to others it was rote and by the time they’d followed up with a second album (‘The Mysterious Ways of Repetitive Art‘, 2015) it was clear there was much more to their ambitions than death metal in a post-‘Sweven‘ and ‘The Formulas of Death‘ world wherein prog-psych rock, doom metal, and such all seemed to factor into this first hint of their growing restlessness. I loved that album, it’d made a quick fan of me as I set it at #22 on my Best of 2015 list and still count it among the best hidden gems of that year. At the time I don’t think many’d thought much of the metamorphosis occurring, it was still death metal and this time around they sounded a bit more fluid, a la later The Chasm and this still fit squarely into the dynamic realm of death metal, however rare that feeling is/was.

Released late in the year and with little time to digest album number three (‘…And as We Have Seen the Storm, We Have Embraced the Eye‘, 2018) did not end up on my favorites list that year, it’d felt strangely interstitial as if they’d held back for the sake of not fully changing their gig from death metal unto some manner of extreme heavy rock. Though I’d scored the album well in review and was prescient enough to have described the change coming today with ‘Echoes of Light‘ that transitional feeling was still one of the more accomplished and intriguing releases of 2018. The tension of that record was surreal, loose shouldered in its sling of guitar hooks but embattled in spirit as they’d slowly appear to let go across its breadth. Maybe they lost some teeth, disagreed along the way, and came out the other end seventy five percent dissolved but preserved but I’d quickly argue that the process of change-or-die (which seems to be the prerogative of most Ván Records artists of late) has, in this case, opted to change-and-survive as we steep into the final work from the original line-up of Chapel of Disease as vocalist/guitarist Laurent Teubel will continue on with members of Ketzer and Witching Hour supporting on tour dates.

Opener and title track, “Echoes of Light“, slings its first hook within seconds of pressing play and they’ve gone for it not only in terms of presenting one of their brightest moments yet from the outset of the full listen but knotted together a freely-flowing song rooted in the tension of swinging heavy rock guitar fantasy but also a late 90’s unto the early 2000’s dark metal (see: Rotting Christ) rattled cadence which sits well alongside the easier-going steps of Sweven‘s contemplative, searching wide debut from a few years ago. Ringing arpeggios, post-metal build and burst movements, and a brilliant set of lead guitar compositions for two add up to a surprising amount of detail under the hood of a song which reads so easily in passing yet stretches on for eight and a half minutes. Things only get a more heavy metal from there with “A Death Though No Loss” featuring another dark metal guitar hook that once again makes the song but evolves in its carve throughout another particularly long piece. This is, for my own taste, the best built peak of ‘Echoes of Light‘ and its core energy where the twang and twist of Chapel of Disease‘s rhythmic changes and transitions have their strongest momentum and carry on with an impressive grasp of movement from idea to idea, most of which trounce a lot of the dry-bones retro heavy rock available today with a virtuosic light-handed touch. Does this still sound like the band I’d become such a huge fan of back in 2015? Yes, at least in terms of the arcing songcraft available to those first two songs but not as much if we consider the rhythmic traditions of death metal.

It is a fusion of opposing forces and smart contrasting of complimentary nodes which drive the initial flushing of the cheeks with blood, the widening of the eyes as those first two songs easily warm the mind to this new-found spiritus within Chapel of Disease and I think most folks can hang with it off the bat, or, shouldn’t be so quickly alienated by the album if you’d stuck around for ‘…And as We Have Seen the Storm, We Have Embraced the Eye‘ or generally enjoy a good heavy rock or heavy metal piece nowadays. No doubt the real test of the metal-minded fortitudes will be the arrival of the much softer, clean-sun sentiment of “Shallow Nights” (see also: “An Ode to the Conqueror”) a tuneful and still guitar driven piece with a fairly humble, shoegazing vocal performance which constitutes the first of three (generally speaking) clean tonal approaches for Teubel. They’re still easing into that territory as the rasp n’ roll ride of “Selenophile” rights the ship but you might have to be the rare fan who gets just much of a kick out of prog-death as you do kicking heavy rock to fully hold onto the determined bucking of sub-genre strictures ‘Echoes of Light‘ embodies. They even go a bit goth metal on “Gold-Dust” if you can go there with ’em, and if you can that means hitting upon some of the better guitar solos and details available to the album even if the tuneful kinda post-punk edge of the full listen has faded into a collapsed mood by the time we’re done with Side B. There is a linear experience available herein, a clearly inspired starting point to shake ass to and a drowned-in set of notions experiencing heat death by the endpoint.

In the process of ‘Echoes of Light‘ spinning on endlessly wonderment turns to introspection and acceptance, a fade which is felt slow and with plenty of post-metallic death metal dramatism attached to every movement yet this is not the only major achievement of Chapel of Disease‘s fourth full-length album. Some of this groundwork was lain by their peers, be they Cadaveric Fumes or Tribulation, in some sense but the major kudos to hand out here comes in appreciation of their tuneful, inventive guitar work and these well detailed and often exuberant yet pensive songs crafted with some considerable repeatable affect. Pair these somewhat long-winded by immersive songs with an appropriately spaced yet simple read cover artwork per the brilliant Waeik and we are served a professional but not cheesily polished or mainstreamed expression. Accessible as some of the lead guitar wrangling is in its retro-spectacular rock shredding glory the experience overall reads as earnest and less pretentious than it might appear at face value; Though the whole of it did feel uneven at times, specifically in terms of upholding the energetic spire of the first couple of pieces for the duration of the album, I’m not sure the intent was to stride through like a power metal record on high but rather there’d been a journey communicated in hunt of the light that remains in chase. There was little else that’d hindered my leaving this record on repeat for hours at a time and letting it sink in, though I do not find this album to be any less of a transitional moment than their previous and do think they can and will find more vocal consistency to help tie it all together on future releases. A high recommendation.

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