Review by Sandre the Giant
After the crushing embrace of Sepulchral Curse’s 2016 effort, ‘At the Onset of Extinction’, it was only natural to wait with baited breath for the follow up. Well, ‘Only Ashes Remain’ is here at last, and it looks to solidify these Finnish deathlords in the pantheon of excellent modern death metal bands. It is out at the end of July through Transcending Obscurity.
I say modern death metal bands, I mean new really. They’ve been around for seven years, but their sound reeks of an older filth. Opener ‘From Within the Bowels of the Earth is a potent Floridian storm of death metal, reminding me of Deicide circa ‘Legion’. The vocal performance has that almost wind tunnel like roar, while the guitar work is intricate and dense. The cacophonous, Immolation-esque churn of ‘Swarming Blackness’ is a tremendous choice, and while the omnipresent ‘Finnish melancholy’ occasionally lurks in the background, ‘Only Ahes Remain’ is a death metal album that keeps itself fully grounded in brutality.
That’s not of course to say that the band’s sound hasn’t evolved over the past few years. The songwriting is more progressive; guitar tones change and melodic passages pervade more often than not. There is still a subtle black metal influence that creeps in a few places too. But the main thrust of songs like ‘Church of Loss’ and the head caving ‘Dead Stars Drawing Spirals’ are pure death metal, plain and simple. It is almost refreshing to hear a band doing exactly what you’d expect these days. The lumbering death/doom of ‘Eyes Inside’ is a pleasant twist, and the aching weight of the black hearted ‘Maan Tuhkien Uneen’ is a triumphant closer.
If ‘At the Onset of Extinction’ was them finding their feet, then ‘Only Ashes Remain’ is where Sepulchral Curse become champion runners. Labyrinthine, laced with a sharped honed sense of brutality and yet still not afraid to throw in a little something different here and there, this is the sound of a band reaching the higher stages of the evolutionary ladder. I can’t wait to see where they go from here.
https://www.facebook.com/SepulchralCurseDM/
https://sepulchralcurse.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/transcendingobscurityrecords/
The Killchain 
[…] I’ve followed Sepulchral Curse’s career with great interest since their 2016 release ‘At the Onset of Extinction’. They’ve been on one of my favourite labels for that time though to be fair, so it wasn’t hard for me to miss them, but their output has been consistently good the whole time. They have a new record coming out at the end of October, entitled ‘Abhorrent Dimensions’, on Transcending Obscurity and I hope that their stellar blackened death metal assault has not degraded since their brilliant ‘Only Ashes Remain’ debut from 2020, which I reviewed here. […]
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