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CAINITES “Revenant”
CAINITES “Revenant”
By Dr. Abner Mality
What happens when a devout Orthodox priest becomes a vampire? CAINITES tries to provide an answer and in so doing, they’ve come up with quite a blood-soaked little treat. I wouldn’t call “Revenant” a flawless album by any stretch, but it is intriguing and I think it’s the best thing to come out on Scarlet Records in quite some time.
The flavor of Greece and the Mediterranean hovers over this project. While CAINITES have their own sound, I can detect some similarity to SEPTICFLESH, VARATHRON and other guiding lights of the Greek black metal scene here. But there’s also touches of Swedish melodic death metal and even Gothic stuff like A VISION BLEAK. The tunes are driving and catchy and not too taxing on the brain. But the real source of interest here are the unique vocals of “Frater Orion” aka Andrea Falaschi. He has got some creepy pipes for sure and he’s the perfect choice to provide the voice of the tormented vampire priest. He has a deep gravelly “inhaled” sound that isn’t quite typical death or black metal but is pretty demonic sounding. Occasionally he also delves into a plaintive clean crooning but not that often. The contrast between the vocal styles reminds me of SEPTICFLESH’s dichotomy.
“Darkness Awaits” is a great hard charging opener that mixes melo-death and Greek black metal, with THOSE vocals grabbing your interest. “Theotokos” is more mid-paced but still hard, while the excellent “Vampire God” might be my pick for best song of the album. It’s just so catchy. Now there are times when CAINITES stumbles...”God’s Wrath” sounded overwrought and didn’t work for me while “Embrace” leans too far to the Gothic metal side to fit...but I believe “Revenant” is a debut album for these guys and just shows they’ve got room to grow. The concept is intelligently laid out, too. This is quite different from the usual Goth metal/power metal on Scarlet Records!
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