Album Review: Black Curse - Burning In Celestial Poison
Reviewed by Sam Jones
I was not expecting to see Black Curse return with a new album, however with the success and adoration that Endless Wound has garnered for itself I wasn’t complaining. Formed in 2015 originally under the name of Maliblis, the band soon altered their name to Black Curse. Founded out of Colorado, United States, the band fuse black and death metal together to craft a truly searing soundscape that’s just as slicing as it is grevious. Releasing their Endless Wound Demo in 2019, the band would release their first album under the same name a year later, becoming one of my own, and many others’, top records of coronavirus-dominated 2020. Other than that the band have since released another Demo last year but seemingly in stealth the band have announced their next full length record: Burning In Celestial Poison. Black Curse are a band I’ve found myself repeatedly revisiting on more than one occasion so I was more than hyped to see a new record on the horizon. Set for an October 25th release date, Burning In Celestial Poison is due for distribution through Sepulchral Voice Records in their continued partnership.
True to Black Curse, the instant they get an excuse to do so they’re unfurling a barrage of blast beats, dissonant and furious riffs, and a volley of boiling vocals at you all before they let their volcanic guitar solos with wailing whammy bars off the chain entirely. The opening thirty seconds alone seals your confidence into Burning In Celestial Poison, for you know already your time and money has been respected. I’d argue the band have doubled down twice over on the surrounding atmosphere that their already inhospitable soundscape may conjure. It’s not enough to deem this record as “evil” or “malignant”, the band effectively throw you into the heart of an inferno, where the flames lick and burn your body and mind and the door has been shut in on you. There is absolutely no escape and so total is their onslaught you won’t want to leave because that dreaded sense of morbid curiosity wants to see this record through to the very end. You can have the entire record to go yet, but you’ll feel the obsessive need to see just how committed Black Curse really are to this display of bestial savagery. The band berate you with riffs and crashing drums and, in the distance, can be heard the cries of despondent screams.
I’d argue strongly my preferred tracks from Endless Wound were the longer pieces because it gave Black Curse the freedom to experiment with songwriting, and therefore implement ideas they may not have been able to on shorter pieces. But that record had more tracks and a shorter runtime whereas this album has fewer tracks and a longer runtime. Only one track is shorter than five minutes; the rest reach far beyond the seven minute mark and even then, two tracks out of five exceed eleven minutes. It’s evident Black Curse are more than comfortable ripping out these longer, grating works since that is the fashion that Burning In Celestial Poison has been constructed around. You’d think listening to a ten minute blackened death metal track like those on record here would be an arduous task but through songwriting and the immersion that’s resultant of it, Black Curse demonstrate how to keep their audiences enraptured. The band barely, at all, put their foot on the brakes and so through the aid of production, they assail us with a ferocity the likes of which are to make even the most weathered and veteran extreme metal individuals do a double take towards their fervour. Greater immersion also solidifies the band’s guitar work, practically losing any sense of order as they unveil a steam of constant violence in our direction but it’s coupled alongside drumming and vocals that are just as virulent and noxious. The goosebumps this record induces through the sheer rabid nature of its power is frightening.
If Black Curse thought Endless Wound was a little sluggish in places or through fans hadn’t received enough yet, they’ve utterly tripled down on the speed this record moves at. The tempo this record manages to attain in places is absurd and is therefore beneficial that the band have developed a fondness towards longer tracks because it gives them reason to continually change up and include new ideas and riffs and licks into their songwriting. So fast and total is their soundscape that I’m convinced Black Curse could write a blackened Grindcore album of sorts, because this work arguably is already with just how incessant their assault is. There will come moments where everything is climbing and climbing and growing more intense, and all the instrumental components are roaring together and you think it can’t get faster, and then it does. Note how the drums hardly relax for a moment; for the record’s majority they are fishing out a constant stream of blast beats and devastation, setting the pace by which we and the rest of the band are judged against. The crashing and resonance these drums infer is alarming since the production has given this album a far more hollow, cavernous soundscape than Endless Wound offers. Even when the songwriting slows for a moment, you get the idea the drums are slowing only out of necessity and not out of want, for the weight and impact they bring is to be feared and you can’t be sure whether they’re settling us down for the next track or merely biding their time for another deluge of fury.
Whilst we’ve covered how the guitar work plays at such a fast rate that streams of notes contribute to the suffocating soundscape, the riffs themselves, when we decipher what they’re actually bringing to the table, are so maddeningly fast that it feels like they’re actively tearing themselves apart to be played in accordance with the needs of the songwriting. There’s a despairing, truly perverted quality these riffs possess as if the speed that they’re demanded to be played at is distorting the very sound they’re producing; it feels unnatural, it’s utterly warped and therefore fits serenely into Black Curse’s desired effect with this record. Even when their songwriting puts the brakes on a touch for these riffs to be fleshed out some more, they still come across as these stretched and tortured creations that have been totally misshaped and hammered out of their original form. Other than select instances where the songwriting gives you that window into horror manifesting before you, Burning In Celestial Poison is an absolutely breakneck-paced experience with antediluvian malice. It’s soundscape suggests this record was formed prior to the breaking of dawn, before the inception of ordered creation, and it’s riffs with their horrific intonations absolutely hammer this aesthetic home.
In conclusion, Black Curse show to us that everything we thought was heavy regarding Endless Wound was simply a glimpse into the abject nightmare that Burning In Celestial Poison brings forth. For just more than forty-five minutes Black Curse throw everything they possibly have at you, so much so that you’ll be scratching your head in disbelief as how they can still be going or how the tempo can still be rising when they’ve already seared the flesh off your bones. It’s not just any one aspect of the band that comes at you, for Black Curse it really is everything or nothing as they throw all pretenses of holding back to the wayside. If they aren’t blasting your very soul into some netherhell then it’s not worth doing, and they do precisely that for every second you’re made prisoner to this record. This record is not for the faint hearted but for those who revel boldly and lovingly within extreme metal’s most ruthless and arcane dwellings and even then you’ll be pushed into the back of your seat with the level of annihilation Black Curse have wrought herein. It truly is a successor to Endless Wound in every vein of the term. Despicable, harrowing, unapologetic.
