Sacrilegion - From Which Nightmares Crawl (2022)

From Which Nightmares Crawl is a gem of a death metal record that must have passed me by initially; likely sitting in my promo folder and I just couldn't get around to it for a year or so after. The stunning cover art from John Quevedo Janssens heralds its opaque, abyssal sound quite well, and once into the music we're eviscerated by a choppy, semi-technical attack that seems to thread together inspiration from bands like Morbid Angel, Deicide and Vader, but never conforming too closely to any of them. I also felt like there was a dash of darker melodic death metal coursing through this, but rendered so diabolical that it would be unrecognizable from most of the Swedish precursors, and a pretty good comparison is Germany's Sulphur Aeon, although more on their death metal side.

Ultimately, though, this was a pretty damn good debut that clearly deserved more attention than it got, with a fully developed and advanced style that ticks a lot of boxes. Gruesome gutturals that are often punctuated or accented with snarls, sometimes a little overbearing as you'd hear in more modern death or deathcore stuff, but really well structured alongside the riffing. That, though, the riffing, is the star of the show for me...evil, clinical hybrid of surging death metal and slicing, saturated death/thrash tempos, churning and chopping constantly, from spurts of tremolo-picked madness to dissonance banks of chords that feel like you're undergoing surgery on the deepest layers of the conflagration. There's always some sort of darker harmony or twisted melodic death/thrash lick that emerges and gets your head nodding amidst all the more intense battery, which is anchored down by a thundering, turbulent, blasting drum performance. You can hear some bass curving beneath the riff-storm but it does blend in somewhat.

Sacrilegion also has some good lyrical qualities, even in song titles like "A Terrible Pilgrimage to Seek the Nighted Throne", "Transfixed in Spiral Ambiguity" or "The Hollow Blue Eyes of Yomi at Twilight", there's a little more intellectual sophistication than you might be expecting, and it translates well onto the music, which is practiced and certainly not primitive, but never overly technical or self-indulgent. The consistent breaks to more melodic riffs help balance out the choking darkness of the album's themes, especially in the depths of "Legacy of the Impaler" and From Which Nightmares Crawl just has that range and capacity to provided the well-rounded sort of death metal experience I am always seeking out. Intensity and restraint in equal measures, really listenable and I'm excited to hear whatever a sophomore album will sound like.

Verdict: Win [8.5/10]

https://sacrilegion.bandcamp.com/album/from-which-nightmares-crawl