The best kind of death/doom metal fixates on the morbid and hopeless nature of humanity. You hear a record like that, with its catacomb atmosphere and shallow depth of life, and everything seems a bit emptier in your life. It takes a special album to elicit that response, but Cianide’s first album The Dying Truth does just that. Released in 1992, this slow-churning beast should have far wider recognition in the minds of modern audiences.

Cianide came from the same Chicago scene that gave us Novembers Doom, though their first album, Amid Its Hallowed Mirth, did not drop until 1995. The Dying Truth was part of the first wave of death/doom in the United States, before the inclusion of keyboards, violins, and female vocals tainted the musky rawness. Cianide is not caught up in transcending any boundaries, but laying claim to the grim underbelly of death metal.

There’s almost nothing pristine about this album, save for the polished drum sound that feels a bit out of place. The riffs are murky and padded with layers of grime, and the vocals from bassist Mike Perun are grossly deep. He infuses the songs with a haunting presence that never distances itself from the album. It’s hard to pick out anything he says, which is effective pertaining to the album’s ambiance. If lyrics are in hand, the themes are death, death, and death. Notice the variety there, by the way.

“Human Cesspool” is the lone holdout to the death/doom party, preferring to stick with crusty death metal.

It feels abnormal in as track number two because of how calculated and steady much of the other songs are. It could have found a better place in the second half of the album, which has its heart in the classic doom of Pentagram and Saint Vitus, though with an angry twist. By the time “Second Life” fades into noise after six-plus minutes, the 42 minutes of The Dying Truth feels more like 80 minutes.

That doesn’t mean that The Dying Truth is unbearable, at least not because the songs are poorly written. This is not feel-good music, and that can make for amble squirming if not in the right mind set. With little in the way of lead guitar breaks or anything melodic to break up the heaviness, the album can be a tough crawl through. Props to Cianide for doing that, which was probably their intention all along.

Cianide carved out a strong legacy of death/doom over the past two decades. Their sporadic output in the past few years may have hurt their standings, or any chance to rise up to the level of an Asphyx. This album was re-released last year on Deathgasm Records, with a few demos tacked on as bonus tracks, making it obtainable to the curious listener.

For putting forth an undervalued debut worth standing alongside records from Autopsy and Obituary, The Dying Truth gets the nod for this week’s Retro Recommendation. “The Dying Truth” Live 1995 Video