### Spawn Of Possession: Cabinet

#### 22/03/13 || The Duff

We had an androgynous staff-writer called The Abyss working for us some years back who reviewed “Cabinet” in a very brief, do-as-you-please manner in the sense he didn’t give an SoP record nearly the amount of time it takes to fully absorb. When “Noctambulant” was released, I think he said something along the lines of “I will give this one a chance because I hurried my ‘Cabinet’ review and ended up really liking it in the end sometimes when I laugh my penis gets erect and slips into my vagina!”.

“Noctambulant” is tech death glory, but the catchiness, more sensical arrangements and more direct-headedness of “Cabinet” was foregone, which may have left some disheartened because as with everything the band has released, this record shook the underground tech-death scene and is simply miles ahead of all the competition.

See now when I was younger I was taken into the tech-death sub-genre by Visceral Bleeding’s “Transcend into Ferocity”, and seeing them on tour they were promoting country-men SoP’s debut (Rondum played drums in SoP while singing for Visceral Bleeding at the time). But I, like hermaphrodite The Abyss, had to shelve “Cabinet” and only came around to trying it again once finding a masterpiece in the follow-up – well, to say the least, “Cabinet” is a tech death catchy platter of dizzying rhythms and exceptional musicianship, but of a more toned down variety.

The idea to songwriting here is to create tech flurries about the one or three central, very grounded ideas, whereas on “Noctambulant” such themes are spread out over bars at a time, shift in all sorts of directions and then on top of it morph on second cycles and have all variety of hullaballoo to cushion them. On “Cabinet”, even though the riffs are irregular on the occasion, they rarely stretch beyond traditional length, and are quite easy to make sense of despite little flourishes that surround them to add spice.

Thusly, the production is meatier than on later efforts. Here, the focus is on the riff, on the groove, on the meat and potatoes and actual structure, not dancing regally about the listener’s head and taking some ten-twenty listens to fully absorb. Ultimately, what we are left with is a “Piece of Time” to “Unquestionable Presence”, a “Human” to “Individual Thought Patterns”-type transition, and simply an amazing disc of technicality and catchiness, all-round impeccable musicianship, just shy of perfection.

- Information
- Released: 2003
- Label: Unique Leader Records
- Website: Spawn of Possession MySpace
- Band
- Jonas Bryssling: guitars
- Niklas Dewerud: bass
- Dennis Röndum: vocals, drums
- Jonas Karlsson: guitars

- Tracklist
- 01. Lamashtu
- 02. Swarm of the Formless
- 03. Hidden in Flesh
- 04. A Presence Inexplicable
- 05. Dirty Priest
- 06. Spawn of Possession
- 07. Inner Conflict
- 08. Cabinet
- 09. The Forbidden
- 10. Church of Deviance
- 11. Uncle Damfee