AN NCS PREMIERE: SANCTUARIUM — “ABHORRENT EXCRUCIATION IN REPRISAL”

Only in the most miserable domains of death metal could adjectives like “fetid”, “putrescent”, “repulsive”, and “utterly disgusting” count as high praise. Trying to explain that logic to someone who isn’t already an aficionado of extreme metal would be like trying to teach math to a golden retriever, though a retriever would just keep wagging its tongue instead of rolling its eyes.

But we should acknowledge that while great achievements in musical repulsiveness have drawn applause since the early days of death metal (and especially creeping and crawling death metal of doom), that’s really never been the full story. Acclaim (at least when justified) has always depended on much more than simply sounding foul and spawning visions of putrefying corpses.

The Catalonian death metal band Sanctuarium understand this, and they practice their understanding extremely well, having put their finger on what made the OGs timeless in their appeal and then expanding upon it in increasingly surreal and heart-palpitating ways.

One proof of that is in the Sanctuarium song we’re premiering today, an extract from a new album that’s set for release in September by Me Saco Un Ojo and BlackSeed.

Sanctuarium crawled from the rotten earth that spawned them in 2021 (then the solo effort of one Necrohelm), releasing three tracks on a demo and a split with Magick Howl. In the spring of last year, as a duo, they then released their debut album Into the Mephitic Abyss, where they significantly expanded the temporal magnitude of their songs, providing four tracks with an average length close to 9 minutes.

On the new album, evocatively named Melted and Decomposed, Sanctuarium (now a full band) have again embraced long-format songs. The new one expands to five entries with an average length of more than 9 minutes. The one we have for you today is the album opener, the 9 1/2 minute “Abhorrent Excruciation In Reprisal“.

A metal colleague referred me to the new album as “perhaps the grossest-feeling record this year”, and unless you’re one of those musical golden retrievers you’ll understand why that’s a laudatory description when you hear this song.

Make no mistake, the music is crypt-born through and through, often as oppressive and choking as being submerged in a sewer filled with congealing viscera.

The guitars and bass are tuned to rancid frequencies, thick and noxious. There’s an echoing quality to the rhythm section’s contortions that make them sound like they were indeed recorded in a sewer. The vocals straddle a line between a gurgle and a roar, and they scream in horrid ecstasy. The music groans and heaves like the emanations of some rotting behemoth in its last exertions toward a sodden subterranean burial ground for its kind.

But, as already forecast, there’s more going on here than just foul, nostril-clogging musical aromas delivered at a crawling pace. The eerily wailing and quivering tones of the song’s opening quickly create a haunting atmosphere (also crypt-born). The bass-lines play havoc with listeners’ intestines. The drums crack like axes and attack like cannonades. The riffing roils and writhes in rapidly vibrating displays of mutilating madness. Grooves burst forth like the manic jackhammering of coffin nails.

As further forecast, the music is also surreal in other ways. The guitars warp across the channels, spearing the mind with shivering screaming tones as the drums cavort in non-linear ways. And even the regurgitative vocals begin to sound hallucinatory.

Yes, it’s disgusting. It’s also dynamic, destructive, and exhilarating. See for yourselves:

Melted and Decomposed will be released on September 3rd. Me Saco Un Ojo will handle the vinyl LP release, and BlackSeed will handle the CD version.

Below you’ll also find a stream of the new album’s first single, “The Disembodied Grip Of Putrescine Stench“. It’s also a tempo-dynamic horror, even slower and more blood-freezing in its slowest movements than today’s song premiere, but perhaps even more twisted, berserk, and nauseating when it accelerates. (These are compliments!)

PRE-ORDER:
https://mesacounojo.bandcamp.com/album/melted-and-decomposed
https://www.blackseedprod.com/en/

SANCTUARIUM:
https://sanctuarium.bandcamp.com/