Claustrum is an old school death metal trio born someplace between Trieste and Gorizia, in north-eastern Italy, featuring members from Grime, Affliction Vector, Fierce and Dromme, all brought together by a feral passion for the death metal of old. Drawing their inspiration from sci-fi, horror, authors like Poe and Lovecraft and the misery of human existence, in their debut, self-titled album Claustrum delivers some crypt-reeking, disturbing death metal, heralding the impending Apocalypse. The Latin word Claustrum stands for a thin sheet of gray matter that connects to cortical and subcortical regions. It is considered the most interconnected structure within the telencephalon, that allows for the integration of multiple cortical stimuli, such as visual, acoustic and tactile. It is commonly considered the area of the human brain where the soul resides. But Claustrum is also an enclosed space, a fence, a prison. As the band explained: Claustrum to us also means separation from the rest of the world. The record was born during a period of confinement due to the pandemic and for this reason it is above all an outlet, something authentic and spontaneous with which to release negative energies that have been compressed for too long. That's why during this separation for us it was paramount to rely on certainties. And those certainties are liturgies written by Autopsy, Asphyx, Death and Incantation. About the artwork, artist Davide Dartworks Mancini commented: I created this piece thinking about the environmental impact of industries and the role they play in the climate crisis. This is the vision of a gloomy, melted scenario, where mud spontaneously shapes grotesque figures crossed by rusty pipes and smokestacks, the only remnant of civilization and probably the arsonist of the upcoming major fire which Greek philosophers called Ekpyrosis, referring to the end of the world by a great conflagration.
