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SEPULCHER
Panoptic Horror

Edged Circle Productions (2018)
Rating: 9/10

Norwegian act Sepulcher is a band I’ve followed since hearing their debut opus Mausoleum Tapestry back in 2015. What attracted me to this unorthodox bunch was the vocal attack which brings an almost mournful and maniacal flurry of maddening wails, which are complemented in equally frightful and oddball fashion by the cauldron of racing, grey guitars and rushing drums behind.

Sepulcher is a strange brew, marrying blackened thrashing avalanches with similarly abrasive yet, dare I say it, psychedelic nuances, which as a result brings to the table an uncomfortable, often jarring and dread-filled cacophony brim full of ominous strains.

Going through the tracks of this new album was never an easy task; the combo just producing so many original and suspenseful soundscapes built upon festering, arrogant bass rumbles and sonic thrash assaults. And yet there’s no real way of truly pinning Sepulcher down. So why bother, right?

Instead, let’s focus on the manic gush of opener ‘Corporeal Vessels’, which is a truly violent, blazing grey haze of icy blasts. For the most part, the track is ultra-fast then gaining further pace before the straight jacket is applied to restrain the vocal craziness. But what a way to bring an album out of the gloom, Sepulcher offering an abysmal tirade that could only emerge from the wastes of Scandinavia.

Utterly bleak dynamics streak through this humourless barrage, bringing with it a trudging misery in the form of rust-bucket ‘Towards An Earthly Rupture’ with its accessible yet remote traipse. Here, all the instruments suddenly combine to form a rainy blizzard of might before charging into a malicious thrash torrent.

This is one hell of torrential downpour when it comes to musical compositions, ‘Corrupting The Cosmos’, ‘Ethereal Doom’ and ‘Abyssal Horror’ reflected by their titles as each track unravels and meanders with murky effect. ‘Corrupting The Cosmos’ starts out as some measured yet gnashing veil of bleak, forlorn guitars before driving into an agitated, almost hardcore-cum-thrash spikiness. Meanwhile, ‘Ethereal Doom’ is a frenzied gallop, almost punky by design yet awash with lethal whips and hysterical oddness. In fact, I’m unsure as to how this combo arrived at such a sound, but it certainly feels natural in a very unnatural way! ‘Abyssal Horror’ starts like some doomy ashen Slayer; the drums rattling with ominous accord before the ghostly gallop prevails, and again we’re into that raw, primeval territory where the barked, shouted vocals act as desperate cries that lead us to death.

Elsewhere, ‘Scourge Of Emptiness’ is macabre, bewildering, haunting and yet full of sneering charm. The grey cracks appear at each corner and with every angle as the band starts its thrash blitz, churning up old, dusty graves of the 80s death metal scene but adding huge layers of tension and caustic vibrations. The whole barbed mix is a spontaneous outburst of absolute horror one could only probably appreciate if holed up in some possessed cabin amongst the Nordic pines.

As the seven-minute album closer ‘Haunting The Spheres’ comes raging with extra coldness, I’m left dazed and eventually aurally raped by this raking, surging opus of mass destruction. And with that Mariusz Lewandowski cover art to back it up, one can only surrender to this violent spectral force that has escaped from its asylum of terror and begun its devastating course.

Neil Arnold

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