The very depths of the human soul are rarely the sort of territory that many of us want to experience in a raw, uncompromising form. It’s much like looking into the mirror of your own self and being utterly terrified as to what you will see therein and what will be staring back at you, but it can be through true suffering and pain that the soul can be understood should one subject themselves to understanding and quelling all that entails. Effortlessly, such introspection can lead to a harrowing and dark experience the likes of which we’re likely to have, at most, a handful of times throughout life. That’s a concept that many have done their best to bring to life in the time of just one album, but very few have been able to do it effectively. With their latest, Cavernlight does it damn near flawlessly to a staggering degree.

When we are at our weakest, that’s often when we are the most open to ourselves and when we’re aware of all that makes us who we are from our failures to our deepest insecurities. I could not even begin to fathom the pain and sorrow that inspired Cavernlight in the craft of “As I Cast Ruin Upon the Lens That Reveals My Every Flaw”, but it’s from that title alone that anyone should know immediately that this isn’t the kind of post-doom with some neat atmosphere or sublime riffage; it couldn’t be any further. What Cavernlight has brought forth for this release is the apex definition of what it means to have catharsis on a level that cannot be considered anything short of horrifying to view from the outside as this is a performance that’s as personal as it is visceral in every possible form of its execution. It’s the sort of performance that you truly have to surrender yourself to in order for the true power of the album to take hold in all of its cold truths with even the smallest moments of “As I Cast Ruin” speaking absolute volumes of despair as Cavernlight shows us the true depths of the deepest suffering the soul, heart, and mind can bear with the very essence of light a curse upon the senses. It all makes for an utterly suffocating creation that drags one down further into the reaches of blackness from which this album was born out of, but it’s with a special breed of catharsis that Cavernlight manages to pull the listener back from the brink. Scarred, but back, nonetheless.

It’s maybe a handful of times a year that we’re able to be given a creation on such a level as what we have gotten here for all that is needed in order to bring it to life in all that it can be, and it’s in every way that Cavernlight needs to be hailed as one of an exceptional group of bands that managed to pull it off in practically flawless form. One need not much time to become lost in the encroaching darkness of “As I Cast Ruin”, but it’s in the search for escape that one need take heed of the truths that are held within for, surely, they’re a key to our very selves.

LISTEN to “As I Cast Ruin Upon the Lens That Revels My Every Flaw” on Bandcamp here.

LIKE Cavernlight on Facebook here.