Description

Over the last few years, The Corpse, the lone musician behind Cemetery Lights, has ably demonstrated his unique talent for traversing the chasm between contemporary musical sensibilities and classic, second wave black metal, especially the likes of Mortuary Drape, Necromantia, and Zemial. With each successive release, he has continued to perfect the baleful, macabre sound for which his project has come to be known, and his new release, “Consumption,” which has been three years in the making, is the most fully realized expression of this sound. Primarily used in two ways, consumption can mean the act or process of consuming or a progressive wasting away of the body, especially from pulmonary tuberculosis. Both meanings are thematically at play on this album, which recounts the tale of Mercy Brown, an obscure piece of folklore from Rhode Island, the band’s place of origin. During the 19th century, tuberculosis—known as “consumption” for the way it consumed its victims’ bodies—spread aggressively through New England. Seeing households ravaged by the illness, many came to believe that some victims remained partially animated, sucking vitality from the living—a sort of Puritanical twist on the Old World vampire legend.