{"id":72956,"date":"2018-09-14T00:00:02","date_gmt":"2018-09-14T00:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=72956"},"modified":"2018-09-25T21:30:04","modified_gmt":"2018-09-25T21:30:04","slug":"album-review-sepulcher-panoptic-horror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/album-review-sepulcher-panoptic-horror\/","title":{"rendered":"SEPULCHER – Panoptic Horror (2018) | Album \/ EP Reviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

SEPULCHER
Panoptic Horror<\/strong><\/span>
\n\"\"
\nEdged Circle Productions (2018)<\/span>
Rating: 9\/10<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Norwegian act Sepulcher is a band I\u2019ve followed since hearing their debut opus Mausoleum Tapestry<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s no real way of truly pinning Sepulcher down. So why bother, right?<\/p>\n

Instead, let\u2019s focus on the manic gush of opener \u2018Corporeal Vessels\u2019, 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.<\/p>\n

Utterly bleak dynamics streak through this humourless barrage, bringing with it a trudging misery in the form of rust-bucket \u2018Towards An Earthly Rupture\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

This is one hell of torrential downpour when it comes to musical compositions, \u2018Corrupting The Cosmos\u2019, \u2018Ethereal Doom\u2019 and \u2018Abyssal Horror\u2019 reflected by their titles as each track unravels and meanders with murky effect. \u2018Corrupting The Cosmos\u2019 starts out as some measured yet gnashing veil of bleak, forlorn guitars before driving into an agitated, almost hardcore-cum-thrash spikiness. Meanwhile, \u2018Ethereal Doom\u2019 is a frenzied gallop, almost punky by design yet awash with lethal whips and hysterical oddness. In fact, I\u2019m unsure as to how this combo arrived at such a sound, but it certainly feels natural in a very unnatural way! \u2018Abyssal Horror\u2019 starts like some doomy ashen Slayer<\/a>; the drums rattling with ominous accord before the ghostly gallop prevails, and again we\u2019re into that raw, primeval territory where the barked, shouted vocals act as desperate cries that lead us to death.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, \u2018Scourge Of Emptiness\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

As the seven-minute album closer \u2018Haunting The Spheres\u2019 comes raging with extra coldness, I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n

Neil Arnold<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SEPULCHERPanoptic Horror Edged Circle Productions (2018)Rating: 9\/10 Norwegian act Sepulcher is a band I\u2019ve 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,4154],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-ep-reviews","category-sepulcher"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72956"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72958,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72956\/revisions\/72958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}