Los Angeles’ metal scene has its share of gems, but is largely remembered for the heyday of the Sunset Strip and the Aquanet-doused denizens that made a mess of West Hollywood in the 80’s. Yet since moving here, I can’t seem to stop accidentally finding interesting acts everywhere I turn, whether it’s the industrial pop leanings of Wreck and Reference or the long-form neck-snapping aggression of my friends in Skyeater. Civerous were one such chance encounter, a band I saw open a show I had decided to go to that blew me away so completely I started going to shows just to see them. It’s been a real pleasure to watch them grow, evolve, and make their mark on LA’s underground scene, and it is an even greater pleasure to see them introduced to the wider world through a newly forged partnership with esteemed death metal tastemakers 20 Buck Spin and Maze Envy, easily the band’s most outstanding work to date.

At first blush, one might think they know what they’re getting into with a band like Civerous. The band’s bread and butter since inception has been a cavernous, haze-soaked mix of the darkest parts of black, death, and doom metal, moving from crawling suffocation to off-the-rails fury and back again. Maze Envy brings the band’s songwriting chops to a new level; by taking the formula the band has been honing on demos, splits, and their first full-length, 2021’s Decrepit Flesh Relic, and injecting a whole slew of new tricks in, Civerous have created an album that succeeds at being full of surprising turns while remaining crushingly heavy at its core, particularly in the way it incorporates a new sense of melody in the songwriting.

The album’s lead single “Labyrinth Charm” sees the band go from death metal to a sudden shift to soaring atmospheric black metal, then back to death metal before reprising the black metal melodies as a funeral doom ender in one of the most clever juxtapositions I’ve heard in a long time. The album’s title track features airy clean guitar and free-jazz rhythms backing up a string section that shifts in tone to become more and more eerie before the track explodes into black metal. There is so much on this album that happens unexpectedly, but the way these elements are written together is so clever that it makes it so that nothing ever interrupts the way the song flows. Every nuance and detail draws the listener deeper and deeper in to the band’s vision, much like the titular maze the album seeks to depict.

Maze Envy is the work of a band that has found the way to push themselves in just the right way to stay true to their core sound while offering listeners something fresh and exciting. It is the sound of a band that clearly put their all into the making of this album, and it is something truly worthy of a debut on a label as lauded as 20 Buck Spin. If this doesn’t convince you that Civerous are a band poised to take over the underground, you don’t have ears.

---

Maze Envy is available now from 20 Buck Spin. For more information on Civerous, please check out the band’s Instagram page