In the lightless darkness of the world below, where the cold, grey waves of the river of forgetting lap against the shores of unceasing, stygian night, there the nameless and the soulless, tragic and deplorable, gather to exchange tales of bleak eternity and whisper secrets born of blood and promises. With sickle and stone they climb the thousand steps to moonlit night, there to gather the dreams of the sleeping, to reap the screams of the foolish and harvest the spirits of those who have turned the world of legends into a world of decay and ruination.
Three years since Sørgelig unleashed the fiercely intense Slaves Of Tomorrow EP, the Greek iconoclasts, dissident dream eaters, have returned, with an astonishing new full length album, wreathed in smoke and shadows – Φθορά! Opening with ‘Breed Of Waste’ that highlights the incredibly harsh, caustic vocals of Odious, that freeze the blood with their unbridled savagery, Φθορά then grasps you by the throat and flings you into a maelstrom of malefic sound and baleful visions. The insistent riffs of ‘Libation Of Blood ‘are driven into your skull like nails as a sinister, insidious evil weaves its way through the song. This is the epitome of black metal ferocity, a genre defining beast of a track. Meanwhile ‘Inexorable Grey’ summons the spirits of rage and war, unleashing forces of terrifying power, building to breathless peaks of blinding speed and darkness and crashing to abyssal depths. Yet Φθορά is much more than a glorious exposition of blasting ferocity and freezing wickedness, with ‘Φθορά’ itself providing a masterful break in the onslaught as its haunting sounds invoke unsettling imaginings of broken ghosts in empty ballrooms, spinning forever in dusty, tear-stained waltzes. Then there is the grand epic of tragedy and terror that closes this unearthly album – ‘Dreamscapes Of Lethe’. Jagged, probing riffs stagger across stuttering rhythms before collapsing into anguish, soul-searing madness, profound melancholy, death and blood. You rise again from a false ending, crawling towards the light, before ancient claws drag you back into darkness. There is no escape from the underworld, no return from Φθορά!
Φθορά will be released by Tragedy Productions, on 6 panel digi-pack with a sixteen page booklet, on October 4th and will surely see Sørgelig marching on towards the highest echelons of black metal. The creative balance displayed between understanding and embracing the essence of black metal and branding a unique seal into its cold, dead flesh is masterful. When Φθορά arrives be prepared to follow Sørgelig into realms unknown…and beyond.
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