This is the third release from this Death Metal band out of the Ukraine. These guys have a bit of a different sound than the typical Death Metal band, especially bands from this area. These guys have a very fast paced, tight & technical style to their music as well. At times they throw in some stop & start parts, melodic more atmospheric parts & even some Death grooves to mix things up a bit. The majority of their sound is heavy brutal Death Metal. The vocals are a mid paced mid ranged Death growl style. I really enjoy Death bands like this that aren't afraid to mix it up a bit. One of the best bands to emerge out of the Ukraine. Check them out & blast it!

Elég régóta figyelem már a CASTRUM munkásságát, így az új lemez kapcsán is csak azt mondhatom: a fejlődés töretlen. Igaz sokat kellett várni legújabb albumukra, de megérte!

Gyorsan le is rendezném az anyag egyetlen negatívumát: a megszólalás még mindig nem tökéletes! Főleg az énekes-gitáros Cornelius hangját érzem erőtlennek. Igaz, hogy nem a klasszikus "rocktorok", de nem az a baj, hogy nem hoz ki mindent magából, sokkal inkább az, hogy a keverés során nem sikerült kellően előtérbe helyezni. Viszont zenei téren egyszerűen nem tudok mibe belekötni!

Ahogy a zenekari fotókon Cornelius pólóján is látszik, óriási hatással voltak rá a korai thrash-death bandák, de a dallamos megoldások alapján azt sem tagadhatja, hogy a skandináv vonulatot is magáénak érzi. A leírtakból talán kiderül, hogy ezúttal is a kárpátaljai-magyar srác volt a fő zeneszerző, ennek ellenére Roma bőgős és Doni dobos is rendesen odatette magát. Utóbbi például a Mirrored Absurdity nótában olyan begyorsulást produkál, melyhez foghatót a legnagyobb bandák ütőseitől is ritkán hallani. Egyébként gyorsabb alaptempójú szerzemények uralják a lemezt, bár nincs nóta, amely egyetlen tempóban menne végig, mindegyik tartalmaz egy kis dallamos lelassulást.

A Mentally Cracked pedig meglepően melodikusan indul, és egy kis begyorsulást követően a különleges ritmusra épülő szólónál újra visszatér a már-már romantikusnak nevezhető hangulat. Na jó, a viccet félretéve, szó sincs a lemezen bármiféle romantikázásról, az ukrán stúdiókban készülő anyagok nem éppen tökéletes megszólalása ellenére ez egy igazán korrekt, súlyos lemez. (Zubor Olly)

It took longer than expected for the Ukrainian death metal band CASTRUM to release the follow up to “Mysterious Yet Unwearied”, an album that almost five years later still regularly finds its way into my cd player. “Phenomenonsense” is the title of this follow up album, which is the band’s third full-length and on this one it’s more than ever clear that the guys have more than 10 years or experience doing this.

After listening through the album a couple of times it becomes evident that “Phenomenonsense” is a natural evolution from “Mysterious Yet Unwearied” since more or less all elements that were present on that album can also be found here, even though in a somewhat reworked form and in a slightly different context. The core is melodic, yet aggressive death metal and even though the band has in the past been flirting with technical guitar work, they have this time taken things one step further and present here a really complex web of riffs that even goes as far as having influences from folk. These folk elements aren’t really anything new when it comes to CASTRUM, since they have also been previously included in small amounts, but on “Phenomenonsense” they aren’t limited to a few songs like before. Instead they are included throughout the album in small amounts, yet always incorporated into the death metal riffing. The feeling of early AMORPHIS and especially “The Karelian Isthmus” era is heavily present in the way the band uses these folk elements to gain some more variation in both the song material and the atmosphere, even though the sound itself differs quite clearly from the one AMORPHIS used. Yet, the technical aspect of the music doesn’t end with the guitar work since you also get it’s counterpart in the very diverse drumming that pulls off countless of tempo changes. It’s also not just in the performance that the band shows that they have the experience, it can also be seen in the song material. Even though I miss any real gems among the songs, the material still keeps up a nice and solid level of quality throughout the album and sets the path for a violent journey for the listener, a journey that thanks to the diversity of the sound doesn’t really get boring or predictable at any point. Still, if I would pick put some of the highlights on the album I would above all mention “Mirrored Absurdity” as the most convincing one followed up by the very aggressive “Don’t Make Me God!”.

It’s nice to see that CASTRUM has taken yet another step forward when it comes to quality through the album “Phenomenonsense” and just as in the past it gives me a positive picture of the band, much thanks to the rich sound. If you want melodic, yet aggressive and heavy death metal where the technical stuff is a major part, well, then you should check out “Phenomenonsense”. (Janne)

It's been for some years that I got news from Ukrainian CASTRUM, I even thought they split up, when they sent me their new album, which came out again on Canadian Bloodbucket Productions. The CD is again a demanding production and after the first listening you will get an answer why it had taken so much to bring this 10-song disc out. All the songs are well-structured Death Metal tracks in the particular style of CASTRUM. There is a certain originality in both their sound and way of composing that you will recognize them immediately. It is as if they continued where their previous album finished – now it has an amazingly good sound (everything is proportionate, well audible, though I must admit not the most brutal one) and I just take my hat off as the guitar performance turned out to be exceptionally superb, I think there lies a lot of work in it, just listen to the long soloparts and those memorable riffs. The rest of the musicians (the rhythm section, to be frank, as CASTRUM is still a three-piece) play also well, without them this would have been an album a level lower as for its quality. There are a lot of tempo changes which they solve in witty ways, there is complexity but the technicality doesn't hurt the straight-forward sense of these Death Metal tracks. I really can't mention any negative features, so get your pen or keyboard and write for info of how to get this masterpiece.

With a career of darkness spanning over the last thirteen years, CASTRUM have now unleashed up on us their third full length album by the name of "Phenomenonsense". They play with some old school Thrash values from start to finish, but underneath that there is a lot of melody and intricate solos to give their music more depth and variety. Most of the time though it is a straight up Thrash assault on your senses. I have to say I'm not massively feeling CASTRUM or their new album "Phenomenonsense" and I think it is because for all the good musicianship there is no originality and a lack of adrenaline fueled intensity that I like to see and hear from a band of this type. Always there is the notion that something is being held back or that something could have been included, plus the vocals are not a very strong element of CASTRUM's sound and the drumming is generic and boring. I've heard a lot worse though and CASTRUM do have their good points, check them out to see if you like. [5]

Ah, my friend Kornel and his Death/Black triumvirate of CASTRUM is back for another strike. Their previous efforts had met rather split reactions within the Metal community, while I for some reason always felt some sort of connection to the band's sound and that has not changed with their latest effort "Phenomenonsense". The guys have been around for 13 years now and it shows in their songs, they have let their songwriting skills mature over the years, now having reached their own sound taking a solid foundation of brutal, yet melodic Death Metal and adding influences from Black and some Thrash Metal to them, as well as incorporating some intricacies that bands of the more brutal trades often leave untouched.

Something that I have always liked about CASTRUM was that they know how to take one step back and reduce heaviness and intensity for the good of the song instead of just blasting straight through and they continue this with their new album, creating some nice dynamics in the process. Usually intros are superfluous ballast at the beginning of an album, but in the case of "March Of The Conqueror" it is more than swathing keyboards trying to generate atmosphere, because the epic electric guitars give the piece a touch of grandeur, before the first full song "Don't Make Me God!" waltzes out with a full blastbeat assault, before settling into powerful mid-paced double-bass territory with gruff Death Metal growls and some spoken words, when they gear down a notch.

And while they neither manage to really innovate or keep all the songs exciting (yes, there are a few tracks here that sound a bit too standard), the mix of brutal and, well, less brutal is what gives CASTRUM a light aura of fascination, keeping my interest up, as showcased in the tracks "Disorder To Keep (Part I)" or the trio of "Mirrored Absurdity", "Mentally Cracked" and "No More World", where they show a good hand for dynamics, intricate melodies and technical prowess, embedded into heavy and fast compositions, loosening them up nicely.

The voice had been one of my main points of complaint in the past and I am sad to say that I still have some gripes with it, for one it seems to have pulled the short straw in the mix, sometimes sounding buried and secondly also lacking in variation and sounding a bit too uniform at times, which is a factor in my overall rating, but is not a knock-out criterion when it comes to judging the CD as a whole. Some songs show that the guys have in them what it takes to achieve a truly grand album, but they still fall short a little with a few sub-par songs and a few production shortcomings, but I still have faith and so should you! (Online September 8, 2007) Alexander Melzer (7/10)

Hailing from the Ukraine, CASTRUM play highly melodic death metal with a militaristic feel to the fast passages - they sound heavily influenced by East European and Polish metal in particular (big surprise, given where they're from), which means the fast parts are really fast and built on rhythms not usually found in American and British metal, and their approach to scales and guitar in general are fairly exotic-sounding. Impenetrably squiggly riffs suddenly turn into melodic pieces one step removed from being ragas, and their riffs are probably infuenced just as much by Ukrainian folk music (albeit speeded up to ridiculous proportions) as by, say, METALLICA or DESTRUCTION. There's some seriously ornate arrangements happening behind the melodic guitar attack, too... and then there's the whole business of the vocalist, who sounds like a Viking transported from the Middle Ages. (He sings in English, incidentally, although in true death style, it's sometimes hard to tell - but that's why they printed lyrics inside the booklet, right?) Don't be fooled by the exotica, though; this is heavy, heavy stuff from guys with serious technical chops, and unlike a lot of metal from their part of the world - where unstable political climates have led to rampant economic distress, making it difficult for the average East European band to afford quality recording services - this is really well-recorded. (Of course, this is also only their third album and they've been around since 1994, so that should tell you something about the relative difficulty in getting albums made over there.) Even scarier, this is actually a trio, something not readily evident from how much is going on here (did I mention they save serious technical chops?); how the guitarist manages to sing while playing such strange-sounding stuff is beyond me. (That must be the part they call "talent.") The best part is that they have just enough of a connection to the early wave of death metal to hold mucho appeal for those who grew up listening to those classic bands, but their location and foreign sensibility makes them really fresh-sounding. This is great stuff, and any thrash-lovin' fool worth his (or her) worn-out WHIPLASH albums should seek this out (and be glad that you can get it cheap through a US label, instead of having to pay an arm and a leg in postage for overseas mail).

This is the rare case of an album that somehow manages to be less than the sum of its parts. I mean, it has all the necessary ingredients to make a very good album: catchy, solid riffing, good vocals, effective drum performance, good songwriting, but somehow it just never seems to come together. Maybe it's the way the parts don't seem to transition properly, or how some of the riffs seem entirely inappropriate at moments, or how some of the drumwork is too active and technical, but something about this release as a whole does not sit right with me no matter how many times I listen to it. The album isn't outright bad, but it just doesn't seem to reach the apex that it really should be able to.

Okay, so CASTRUM play melodic death/black metal. That's an incredibly loose and vague label, I know, but they make it seem pretty good. Melodeath and occasional black metal tremolo riffing take up the guitars, a fairly technical DM inspired drum performance packed to the brim with small fills and transfers forms the rhythm, and the gruff Slavic vocals are nice and powerful. The production is crystal clear and without any apparent flaws. The songwriting isn't particularly varied, but has enough clean breaks and clever songwriting to make it interesting. A lot of this sounds like DUB BUK on "Rus Ponad Vse", minus the thrash and grime. But it doesn't seem to have the sort of punishing intensity of that band, despite how aggressive the music seems to be. "Phenomenonsense" drives me crazy simply because it SHOULD be so good yet fails to grab me in any significant way. My ears perk up for the occasional riff, but overall it just sort of drones on, even though there's a great deal of activity in each song.

For some reason, the songs on this feel incredibly long (and not in a good way) despite their rather average length. Maybe it's the fact that all the songs appear to have been padded out with extra repetitions, as if each song could easily be a minute shorter for the ideas that are actually present in the tracks. Additionally, despite the propulsion of the instrumentation, the songs don't seem to be going anywhere. They're running incredibly fast but gaining seemingly no distance. The band moves seamlessly between slower atmospheric portions and faster blasting portions, but there are no real dynamics to it: it just sort of changes without any rise or fall in what's going on. One moment, it's fast, one moment, it's slow, with no interim slide in between to indicate, "Hey, maybe you should be paying attention here". Yes, it seems unreasonable to me as well to need the album to tell you where you should start caring, but the impression never seems to shake off. It's just not as good as it naturally should be!

Perhaps this is a case of me just not being into the music. That would be a pretty reasonable statement, given my feelings. But I can't help but feel that this album is really more a collection of riffs than anything else. Whenever it's on, I find myself drawn to the guitars but ignoring everything else. I'd recommend that most melodic black and death metal fans pick it up; it certainly appears to be a good album. But if it is, I simply can't see it, despite how badly I want to. (Reviewed by Noah Richards on August 8, 2007)