Meridion – Caverns

Founded in 2017, Meridion is a four-piece death metal combo hailing from Santiago, Chile. The band consists of Southern Curse (guitars, synths, horns & vocals), Bonefucker (bass), Shoort Dagon (drums) and Condanatore (keyboards). In 2018 this hard-hitting Chilean quartet released their debut full-length, Rise from the South. It gained a lot of attention and positive feedback from both fans and media. Thus, the band quickly established themselves in the South American metal scene.

Now, almost five years later, their sophomore full-length has been released via Mexican underground label, Iron Blood & Death Corporation. It’s entitled Caverns and it contains eight lengthy tracks, considering the fact that we’re here deling with mainly devilish death metal.

Caverns marks a significant evolution in the band’s distinctive style, blending dark, fast, and technical death metal with themes of ancient aboriginal culture, magic, occultism and death. It’s kind of a logical progression in Meridion‘s musical journey, offering a decent balance of atmospheric elements and fast-paced sections. The inclusion of the aforementioned keys & synths add an extra dimension to their sound and an overall doomish, captivating, unsettling and psychedelic atmosphere. I like numerous more or less crazy improvisations within each of the song. It never really tends getting boring or repetitive, and one discovers new layers and ‘hidden’ elements with each new listening of this record.

My favourite tracks from Caverns are; the single “Calafate” (released in December 2023 in order to give fans a taste of what’s to come on this full-length), mainly due to inclusion of simple hypnotic riffs, distant rasps and immediate growls, followed by some higher echoing chorales (listen to the song below). Another awesome track is “Behold Man from Monteverde”, where tribal drums, swinging groove and war horns, are creating this sonic attack, an eruption of brutality and unsettling atmospherics.

In general terms; Caverns is the mix of morbid and technical material which goes really well together. I’m not sure if this evocative album artwork from Nox Fragor Artworks is representative of band’s sound, but I can guarantee that song-writing, mixing, production (with an organic feeling) and musicianship is at a very high level.

Another point worth mentioning is the fact that Caverns features two guest musicians; namely Ninhursag, delivering vocals on “Darkness Unleashed”, and Anuradha (sitar) on the aforementioned “Behold Man from Monteverde”.

Highly recommended for fans of the genre and acts as Nile, Immolation, Morbid Angel, Gorguts and Portal. Additional information on this particular second full-length from Meridion, can be found at band’s Bandcamp page https://meridion.bandcamp.com/album/caverns