Here, we’re doing something we almost never do — premiering brief excerpts from songs off a forthcoming release. Such things are mere teasers, even more teasing than the premiere of a complete song from an album or EP that you can’t yet hear in full.
So why did we cave in and sweep away our usual reticence to brutally tease our visitors? You’re about to find out.
The release in question this time is a 7″ split called Divinations that will be released by Sentient Ruin Laboratories on January 5th, a fine way to begin the musical ruination of 2024, which no doubt will turn into another smoking ruin for humanity even without musical help.
The split includes one song each from the U.S. black/death bands Aberration and Diabolic Oath. It is a timely release in more ways than the one just mentioned, because the spring of 2024 will bring us new full-length albums from both bands, Aberration’s Refracture and Diabolic Oath’s still secretive but completed second full-length, and so the split functions as a precursor and taste of horrific things to come.
If you’ve heard the music of these bands before, you’ll understand how much common sense diabolical sense it made to bring them together.
Hailing from Minneapolis, and boasting a lineup that includes members of Void Rot, Suffering Hour, Tvaer, and Nothingness, Aberration have so far brought forth a self-titled debut EP in 2021 and a cover of Beherit‘s “Salomon’s Gate” last summer. You can find those here. Their new song on the split is “Divinations of Flesh“.
In those previous releases Aberration have created music that’s grimy and gargantuan, blood-congealing and crazed, absolutely catastrophic in its low-end detonations and undulations and macabre in its bestial guttural horrors, but paired with seizures of violence and writhing, wailing, and warping guitar maneuvers in stratospheric reaches that become hideously hallucinatory in their atmospherics.
In the snippet of “Divinations of Flesh” that you’ll hear, Aberration lean into the most abysmal and spirit-freezing aspects of their surreal audio abominations — but also render a few seconds of crazed convulsion (with more to come).
The nether-realms of Portland, Oregon are home to Diabolic Oath. Their discography includes a pair of demos in 2018 and 2019, a 2020 debut album named Profane Death Exodus, and their 2022 EP Aischrolatreia (reviewed by Hope Gould here). You can find those at this location. Their contribution to the split is “Divinations of Wrath“.
Like Aberration, Diabolic Oath have proven through their previous releases a talent for amalgamating ruthless sonic devastation, outbursts of maniacal barbarity, and an overarching atmosphere of esoteric horror, accented by prominent fretless bass maneuvers and thrillingly weird guitar soloing, accompanied by tandems of voracious braying growls and blood-spraying shrieks.
Their work is evil to the core, as raw and filthy as week-old roadkill, and as oppressive and abyssal as it is berserk, but it’s technically accomplished as well as disturbing and disorienting. You’ll get a sense of some of that in the snippet of “Divinations of Wrath” that’s included in the brief teaser reel we’re premiering — though it’s the sheer madness of the noise that’s dominant in this clip.
Sentient Ruin characterizes the split as a “declaration of war upon human psyche”, and that’s no lie. As mentioned, they will release Divinations on January 5th, on limited-edition vinyl 7″ format and digital/streaming formats worldwide. For more info, keep an eye on the locations linked below.
P.S. We’re planning to stream the entirety of both tracks before the release of the split. At least when we tease we also deliver the payoff.
https://sentientruin.bandcamp.com
http://sentientruin.com/releases
https://www.facebook.com/SentientRuin
https://www.facebook.com/Aberrationdeath
https://www.facebook.com/DiabolicOathOfficial