Review by Sandre the Giant
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.
‘Onwards the Legions’ is a strong opener, starting with powerful riffing and a real sense of forward motion, but it slowly grows into something a little stronger and more measured by the end. ‘Among the Wretched Columns’ has a nice black metal feel to it, powered underneath by some potent death metal riffing, the shimmering melodies that soar above it are classic blackened pieces. Sepulchral Curse seemed to have leaned into their blackened side a bit more on ‘Abhorrent Dimensions’, with it coming to the fore in the latter half of ‘Burial of Souls’ as well. That doesn’t mean that they’ve left the death metal behind (check out ‘Stagnant Waters’ for the brutal if surprisingly melodic side of that), especially with the intense guttural roars of Kari Kankaanpää, but they’ve really embraced the best way to combine the genres’ potentials into a record of supreme quality. They’ve taken the complexity and nuanced atmospherics of black metal and infused it with the kind of death metal that’d make Incantation or Behemoth proud.
‘Abhorrent Dimensions’ is a record of powerful and dynamic songwriting, where Sepulchral Curse’s evolution as a band becomes slowly apparent. The brutality is there, the blackened edge is there, but the next step has been taken in crafting their music. Embracing their blackened side in a heavier way has given ‘Abhorrent Dimensions’ a richer sound, a more individual voice, and has once against proven that Transcending Obscurity can really find the gems hidden away in the depths of the underground. This is excellent.
https://www.facebook.com/SepulchralCurse
https://sepulchralcurse.bandcamp.com/album/howl-of-the-cursed
https://transcendingobscurity.bandcamp.com/
The Killchain 