Back in 2013,  Germany’s Sulphur Aeon made quite a splash in the death metal genre with their churning Lovecraftian based debut album, Swallowed By the Ocean’s Tide, then followed it up with the more miasmal, Gateway to the Antisphere is 2015, an album that had lofty expectations but still grew on me. Both albums made my year-end lists for their respective years, and the band’s third album will continue that trend.

Whereas the debut had some subtle melody amid the massive churn, the follow up seemed to lose that, but on  The Scythe of Cosmic Chaos, the band has again added some sneaky melody and also, some underhanded grandiosity and immensity to the already vastly massive album. Also, the addition of some well used occult chants and clean chants adds to the austere, regal filth on display.

Some may scoff at the clean chants and croons, but they are used to good effect when used in conjunction with the pummeling but crafty harmonic chaos of the Lovecraftian based death metal. Opener “Cult of Starry Wisdom” immediately introduced you to the hypnotic chants and ritualistic clean vocals and ends with a supine melodic lead that collides with the cataclysmic death metal. The second track, “Yuggothian Spell” as if to cement the band can simply bring the pain at will delivers the album most direct brutal track (along with “The Oneironaut”), before the rest of the album takes you into a stargazing spiral into paranoia and madness.

Whereas many Lovecraftian albums are content to simply focus on filth and muck by way of atonal, dissonant overload, Sulphur Aeon along with say, The Great Old Ones, are able to blend the vast evil majesty of the Ancient Ones and the cosmos with the murkier, dripping, writhing horror you’d expect. For example, the dense, majesterial march and starry melodic lead of third track “The Summoning of Nyarlathotep”, blackened menace of ” Veneration of the Lunar Orb”,  the album’s patient, harrowing, 9-minute, tentacled,  centerpiece “Sinister Sea Sabbath” or dreamy closer “Thou Shalt Not Speak His Name (The Scythe of Cosmic Chaos)”, which ends the album on a perfect, dulcet summoning ritual, a nice endnote to the prior 40 minutes of controlled chaos and yet another album on my year end list.

[Visit the band's website]

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