Hailz Nation! We have some death metal the way we like it, coming courtesy of indie label Vault of Dried Bones. The band’s name is Serpentrance and their mini-album is entitled Besieged Sanctum. Oh unholiest of unholy creations, God Almighty, spare mankind for it knows not what it does. Fathom, oh carrion crow, brothers of unholy mastication. CVLT Nation fans be warned. Serpentrance’s Besieged Sanctum offers more swarth and sullenness than a giant vacuum courtesy of the city’s leaf collection service, strong enough to suck your soul in. If you follow us, you will love this music. This album is darker than a year-long sabbatical into a charnel house.
Serpentrance follow in that darkest-of-the-trenches style that sounds a little Mortician on the slow chugga-chugga, Gath Smane on the downpicks, and Corpsessed on the blastfests. The burgeoning bass is so discordant that along with the guitars, they drown out the sound of the bass drum and the snare and cymbals really stick out. The vocal vomits hover on the lower registers and the guitar squeals, sustains and tremolo really puree the eardrums once Serpentrance hit mid-tempo and beyond, all before Serpentrance suddenly hits the kill-switch again and massive reverb echoes throughout the house like lightning is crashing a few inches from the windows.
If you like most of your death metal slow and ritualistic, laden with occasional blastbeats and mid-tempo mosh sections, you will love this album like Jeffrey Dahmer loves sucking from his father’s tit. An amalgam of doom and death metal slowly simmering into a boil, this concoction is easy to enjoy! This is what hell should sound like if you’re guilty for crimes against humanity, the kind of genocide that scares the shit out of the worst tyrants known to mankind. Ride this boat down the Stygian River all the way to the Apocalypse. Apocalypse Now! Drop the bomb, fuckers, coz that is not what Serpentrance do on Besieged Sanctum. Imagine a monastery slaughterhouse replete with nuns impaled on crucifixes. This shit will weed out the posers in a matter of seconds. Don’t tell me you can listen to Serpentrance after your virgin metal friends forcefeed you a mouthful of Guns N’ fuckin Roses!
I literally can’t believe how downtuned the instruments are here. Stream now or face the face of your creator, fiends. Filth-strewn and unable to stop worshiping Satan, Al Necro out!
Ryan Sanders
April 30, 2015 at 10:00 am
That introductory paragraph, though! Effluvient language of heightened desperation and turmoil, serpentine tongues of inexorable suffering were nurtured to give proper tribute to moments such as this!
Mahdi Zamani
April 30, 2015 at 4:32 am
CN was bound to review this. One of my favs this year.
Chris Owen
April 30, 2015 at 4:16 am
OP confirmed as poseur.
Omar Khalfi
April 30, 2015 at 4:13 am
Demons doing pull ups in hell very cool…