Spanish Hic Iacet have the aura of mystery about them and they prefer it that way. Not only it is not known who the members are in this black/death/doom outfit, it is not even known how many members there are in Hic Iacet. But then, it is almost the way you expect things from the outfit which name translates from Latin as “here lies …” without any indication as to who the person(s) is or are buried under the tombstone.

What becomes pretty clear with their (or is it his?) Prophecy of Doom EP that the nature of the extreme metal played here is rather cryptic and shadowy, with a pair of tracks appropriately titled as Rituals. Hic Iacet music exhales catacombic, dank, early-Nile feeling, without overt Egyptian or mid-Eastern melodies. Droning tremolo here is not so fast, but ever penetrating to the bone, periodically slipping into utter chaos. Cymbals crushes and higher frequency percussion provide the metallic cold wind of sorts, growing more barbaric on Ritual II: Prophecy of Doom without overwhelming. The whole of the music comes from the depth, from some sort of a cult deprived beast, who wants to escape with the help of its servants, and somehow you know you won’t be able to repress it for that much longer. The voices of Hic Iacet contribute to this nightmarish scenario, severely distorted, played with echoing feedback, the voices of the aforementioned servants sitting just above the beast in some abyssic Tartaros.

Where I could use more punch, and this is rarely the complaint with many of the extreme bands today, Hic Iacet underproduced and underperformed in their lower end delivery. I needed to hear more steely booming drums, more snare, toms and bass drums being punched and kicked. It is if the music has a dense gnostic shroud covering the listener, but little backbone. As Prophecy of Doom is more beast and less ghost, that backbone is needed, yet after the EP is over the fog of frightening deprivation and loss will linger for a while.