AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DYSANGELIUM — “DEATH LEADING”

 

Five long years ago we premiered the terrorizing second demo (Leviaxxis) by the German black metal band Dysangelium, and then had some very positive reactions to their debut album Thánatos Áskēsis, which followed later that same year. Now, at last, a second album is on the horizon like a looming storm.

Death Leading will be released by W.T.C. Productions on October 8th, and as you’ll discover through our premiere of a full album stream, it marks a triumphant return, presenting music of frightening power and wholly immersive effect, remorselessly carrying the listener ever deeper into an other-dimensional black vortex from which there is no escape, as mesmerizing as it is fearsome.

 

 

A symphonic introduction that’s tyrannical, militaristic, and deeply ominous leads into the savagery of “Fated”, an enveloping whirlwind of vicious, vibrating chords, magma-like bass bubbling, brain-spearing leads, battering percussion, and extravagant yells and roars. The music seems to straddle a line between cold cruelty and berserker fieriness, broken by an interlude of discordant guitar and grim spoken words, and threaded with melodic accents that sound desolate and doomed as well as fervent and feverish

Vocalist Sektarist 0 continues to demonstrates his own riveting vocal abilities (not the commonplace shrieking) on “Homo Larvalis”, and the music is just as fearsome as “Fated”. But this second track is also a dynamic experience, at first creating a mood of imperious yet terrifying grandeur, then descending into a slow rocking cadence in which the ringing chords resonate with sounds of anguish and hopelessness, then accelerating again into an electrifying frenzy that again combines rapturous delirium with cold-hearted ruthlessness, and also ascending again to heights of sadistic majesty.

A combination of rampant blasting and head-hooking rhythms launch the title track, “Death Leading”, which unfolds with dense waves of riffing and rapidly flickering leads that together sound like both raging pestilence and the grim foreboding of the plague, while also creating an aura of unearthly menace. Sektarist 0‘s somber wails and the beautifully moody bass work (which is beautifully crafted throughout the album) deepens the feeling of unavoidable calamity.

 

 

The dark emotional intensity of the music is pervasive and immersive throughout the album, but the band do create moments of powerfully head-moving momentum in the midst of raging chaos and palpable misery, and the combination of jittery riffing and nuanced but neck-wrecking rhythms within “The Great Work” (which also incorporates feelings of violent derangement and deep melancholy) is a prime example of that.

The band’s use of discordance and dissonance to heighten the poisonous atmosphere of degradation and despair is another recurring feature across the album, prominently featured in “Through Henbane Nebulah” and “Venus Inverse”, both of which again gives Sektarist 0 an opportunity to send chills down the spine with the emotionally splintering intensity of his tormented cries and tortured growls. Yet here, too, the shining and soaring melodies create moods of frightening, awe-inspiring wonder, and both songs also continue to display the versatility and carefully crafted dynamism of the rhythm section.

As the album closer, “When Death And Devil Rise” provides a striking summation of the record’s capacity to generate sounds of terror and tumult, frightening grandeur and unnerving gloom, hysteria and the cold, calculated domination of heartless tyranny. It’s capable of sending the listener’s blood racing and freezing the blood with the sound of unavoidable catastrophe — and that’s true of Death Leading as a whole. It is a tale of ruin, but a mesmerizing one as well.

 

W.T.C. Productions will release the album on LP, digipak CD, and digitally. For info about how to order it, check the links below:

MORE INFO:
https://w-t-c.web-republic.de/store/
https://wtcproductions.bandcamp.com/album/death-leading

DYSANGELIUM:
https://www.facebook.com/dysangeliumofficial