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TENTACULT
Synaptic Perfidy

Transylvanian Recordings (2025)
Rating: 9/10

I write this review just as summer is beginning to fade into autumn, and Tentacult is the perfect soundtrack for such a seasonal change as once fresh leafs begin to crisp and fall. Only the thunder of doom metal can truly accompany the season of the witch, and Synaptic Perfidy is that half-hinted, creeping presence.

This is the third studio album from the Sacramento, California-based horrors who formed seven years ago, but what’s really crazy about this release is that it’s their second full-length in six months! Clearly eager to get on with things, Anton Em (vocals and keyboards), Tyler Baldwin (guitar), Siino (bass) and Chung Leung (drums) spew out eight tracks for a total duration of 37 minutes. This includes two short instrumentals, five short songs and two lengthier tracks.

Musically, Synaptic Perfidy is very much a heavyweight contender for death-doom album of the year. Very much a cult act, Tentacult construct disturbing thick waves of utmost despair but from the most obscure portals. ‘Diffraction Spike’ is an immense boiling quagmire that stinks of its own curled riffage; ghastly in its seething one can only envisage images of slowly shifting plates at the core of a gurgling Earth.

This is not just slo-mo sludge though, far from it. The guys integrate some excellent and slightly unorthodox chugs into their formidable act, ‘The Crater’ exhibiting such a detail with its gruelling manoeuvres. There’s always been something different in the unnerving cacophonies of Tentacult, their sound reverberating around the cranium like heavy church bells chiming to signify that an imminent horror is about to consume the village within which they sway.

‘Caustic Integration’ is a sneering masterpiece fusing hissing vocal retorts and similarly mocking riffs, while Lengthy closer ‘Subjugated To Eternal Quiescence’ is a sprawling black behemoth that aches with sombreness to its core.

Back in 2023 I reviewed Tentacult’s debut album Lacerating Pattern and my praise was high, and this time round I stand in greater awe of their creeping presence. Tentacult lurks under the bed, in the cellar, at the top of the stairs, in the dusty attic and outside the window as a crawling entity dripping with malice, arrogance and evil. Doom has come.

Neil Arnold

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