Sepulchral hail from Spain and are very much indebted to the old school death metal approach. This is a good thing, and although you can practically taste the influences on this new album, Beneath The Shroud, this sense of having been there before only brings more enjoyment. Sometimes you don’t need to reinvent the wheel, and just want some straightforward death metal.
And that’s what you get. A requite introduction throwing you straight into the pit with the title track. Onwards into the vortex of ‘Abandoned Feretrum’, which is full of nasty riffs which churn your stomach. Vocals are the type of growl which could only emanate from the heaviest death metal warrior, and with a production which is raw and brutal, there’s little room for manoeuvring out of the confines its set itself.
That is certainly no bad thing and although little separates these tracks in terms of progression, ‘Torchless Crossroads’ takes down the road of epic territory as its repetitive crescendo summons up feelings of triumph, but soon enough its back into the churning pit. ‘Cloaked Spectres’ being a particularly brutal example of this.
It can get all a bit similar as we move into the second half of the album, but lets face it, by now we are in for the long haul and that descent into ‘From The Crypt’, ‘The Putrid Mist’, is worthy of entry alone, and not just for the great song title. It’s pure horror from the video nasty era, with shades of Edgar Allen Poe thrown in. In fact, that more or less sums the album up. Why go further with this review when you can just head over to Bandcamp and experience the horror for yourself. It won’t change you but it will remind you why old school death metal is so enjoyable.
