RSS Feed


SEPULCHRAL
Beneath The Shroud

Soulseller (2025)
Rating: 7/10

With their brand of Basque Country brutality, Spanish death metallers strike us with a sophomore full-length outing, Beneath The Shroud. Alongside the customary intro (‘A Pact Written In Bone Dust’) there’s ten songs to suck up, the first being the blackened horror of the title track. Boasting a raw South American flavour, the song is not as aggressive as I anticipated, but it is primitive and murky, dousing its audience in the vocal phlegm. With more than a gallop the track meanders with ever flowing malicious intent, building a sense of dread and churning evil.

Sepulchral continues this trend throughout the platter, serving gnarly whips of foaming malevolence coated in demonic soot. ‘Abandoned Feretrum’ is a similarly destructive train wreck; musically there’s a dank fluidity although no real shift, and this is the only real pitfall I encountered. There’s a no-fucks given stubbornness about the album, the cavernous vocal chops leading further into the spiral sameness as stale spores are stirred by the black riffs.

The band truly comes into its own with the chugging morbidity of ‘From The Crypt, The Putrid Mist’. As this song grinds on with its foul bass one can literally smell the decay. The track then bolts into fury, salivating over its own charred carcass as the vocals continue their bile-soaked tirade. The grimness is always at the fore, casting a horrid disfigured shadow over what is already a sinister imprint.

‘Blood, Phlegm, Black Bile’ is self explanatory, a heaving behemoth dripping with darkness as again those riffs and drums churn like fogged rivers. There’s no place for frills here, ‘Cloaked Spectres’ epitomises the direct descent into Hell as the riffs do their job again, snarling with possessed aplomb as they burrow into the subterranean depths of the psyche.

No doubt blessed by satanic waters, Sepulchral’s latest effort stinks of sulphur, the only trace of its journey being impenetrable layers of sediment which last a million years and more.

Neil Arnold

<< Back to Album & EP Reviews



Related Posts via Categories
Share