Album Review: Sépulcre – Cryptic Temple Of Otherworldly Abhorrations

Album Review: Sépulcre – Cryptic Temple Of Otherworldly Abhorrations

Reviewed by Sam Jones

Sepulcre are an act I’ve had my eyes on for a while now. Originally formed in 2012 out of Brittany, France, the band first went by Demonic Oath releasing a Demo and then a Split in 2014 with Cadaveric Fumes, and were initially a one-man band. At some point there’s been a change of mind as Demonic Oath folded and Sepulcre was born as of 2020. A Demo out the same year, their Cursed Ways Of Sheol EP released in 2022, and after four long years we will finally get their first full length album: Cryptic Temple Of Otherworldly Abhorrations through Invictus Productions for an October 16th release date. Sporting ex members of Skelethal too, the band is spearheaded, as was Demonic Oath, by Destroyer 666 drummer Kev Desecrator who takes up bass, guitar and vocals duties here. I’ve had my eye on this record for a while and it’s always good to dive into more French extreme metal.

With sonorous cellos and foreboding atmosphere Sepulcre open their record. It’s far from rampant but it sets the mood immediately, and then the primary songwriting comes into play. With a hail of blast beats and searing guitar work Sepulcre indulge our desires for wanton slaughter with a soundscape torn straight out of Dante’s circles of hell. This essence is more than mere burning, it is the promise of endless, unrepentant malice over and over again until time immemorial. The pace at which Sepulcre perform is extraordinary for whilst others have certainly played faster than them there’s this sense of momentum, and direction, driving the band on to greater depths of depravity.

It’s not enough to simply describe this record as vying for evil intonations; the guitar tone, its wails and languishing strings, the ease by which it snaps into frenzied soloing, paints the record as one enamoured by the most despicable, the most deplorable states of evil early Christendom devoutly feared. In addition, this record throws down every wall and ceiling in its bid to destroy you; the drums are simply fierce, even the simplest strike carries power due to how taut its sound feels. They aren’t struck as much as they crash with rapturous discord throwing all things out of balance. These bass drums are massive and when things get going that foaming, rabid-eyed, berserk nature could distort planetary orbits. The energy is tremendous and once the tidal wave of that opening track is done you’ll come to learn the entire record is besotten with chaos. You are in no comfortable position herein, you’re in their domain. God have mercy on your soul because Sepulcre won’t.

Like some bygone and faraway spectre the vocals traverse the band’s sound with ease and zero difficulty, wafting over the guitar work, colossal it already is, and carry the harrowed zeal with nightmarish efficacy. With the semblance of banshees in their death throes, to the reminiscence of souls mourning their harried beloved, these vocals cry with higher pitch than most acts will demonstrate, providing a blackened quality I wasn’t expecting. The vocals could have been easily drowned out due to the frantic, blitzing style of songwriting Sepulcre sport, therefore the mix has done a great job at keeping these vocals above the guitar work, preventing such sonic conflict from marring the audience’s capacity to interpret what’s happening in the moment.

The production is perfect for the kind of atmosphere Sepulcre clearly wanted to craft. Every single instrumental and vocal component they needed to balance has been done so exquisitely, whether they need to impart a savage riff sequence or a vocal section hearkening the next virile stage of a track, a slower and insidious pace, moments where the guitar work goes off kilter and defies the rest of the band to lament. There’s a lot happening at once and none of grows overbearing nor does its oncoming, successive string of hellish songs grow daunting to endure. There’s a moment where the band drop their entire arsenal on you at once, a true instrumental bomb if there ever was one, towards the end of “Katabasis” and I tell you now I haven’t been bowled over by a band like that, my entire body tingling, in a very long time.

In conclusion, what Sepulcre have accomplished in a single album is sensational. They’ve gone from a name I wasn’t faintly familiar with to a force finely at the forefront of recognition. This is an evil, morbid record, the kind that seeks your death only after the last vestiges of hope and prospect have long departed your soul. Cryptic Temple Of Otherworldly Abhorrations lives up to its hellish, Dante-inspired comparisons with ease, imbuing us with these depictions of infernal and boiling cesspits. It’s an eviscerating, noxious, suffocating experience that’ll take you to the very brink of sanity, then kick you over into that blackened abyss before reeling you back in, teasing you with the promise of a forgone and perverted salvation. There is nothing mercyful with these record, every single riff, drum strike, vocal delivery is so written and performed to deglove the skin from your body and thus set your bloodstreaked flesh aflame. There’s no doubt in mine, it’s an Album Of The Year contender. If Sepulcre stay this course they are onto something extraordinary and are worth every pair of eyes locking onto them. This is the death metal bands today should be taking notes from; ferocious, unyielding, a glimpse unto something dwarfing biblical wrath. Give me October 16th, I need this record in my life at every possibility.

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