Celestial Sanctuary: Yearning For Rot
The old-school death metal revival is the gift that won’t stop giving. Over half a decade into the renaissance of death metal in its purest form, and the scene just won’t quit. Everywhere you turn there seems to be another band popping out of the woodwork – but it’s not oversaturation; the unbelievable fact is that the majority of OSDM resurrectionists are actually producing some of the best work the genre has seen in decades. It has been a movement dominated by North America, with a few European wild cards thrown in for good measure – but now the taste for old-school brutality has landed on British shores. Exploding from nowhere to claim the UK death metal crown BOLT THROWER left behind, Cambridge quintet CELESTIAL SANCTUARY are bursting to life with their game changing debut, Soul Diminished.
There’s a lot of excitement surrounding CELESTIAL SANCTUARY on the UK death metal circuit – and rightly so. Death metal never saw a huge boom of bands in the UK at the genre’s inception in the same way scenes exploded to life in Sweden and the USA. There’s a few truly legendary names – looking at you, BOLT THROWER and CARCASS – but there has never been a UK death metal scene that brought the world to its knees like the movements in Tampa or Stockholm did. CELESTIAL SANCTUARY are aiming to change that, heralding themselves as the forerunners in the New Wave of British Death Metal with Soul Diminished.
“The idea behind the New Wave of British Death Metal is to give a form of identity to the newer death metal bands in the UK because the way UK death metal has been going for a long time has been dragging its heels and falling into irrelevancy.” Front man and creative driving force Tom Cronin explains. “Using this term, the New Wave of British Death Metal, its to show that the UK is relevant in death metal again and we all have things to say. Something that sets us apart is that most of the bands that I would consider to be part of the New Wave of British Death Metal like VACUOUS, SLIMELORD, COFFIN MULCH and even VENOM PRISON, a lot of the people in these bands come from punk and hardcore backgrounds and with that there’s certain socio-political views. It’s also about wanting there to be bands in the UK that don’t just sing about rape and misogyny and glorifying that kind of shit.”
Establishing a new movement for death metal in the UK and taking pot-shots at the ever-controversial slam scene aside, there’s still plenty to discuss with Cronin. Top of the list is the bold and ambitious move of writing a concept album for the debut.
“I love concept albums, so it was really important for me to have some sort of concepts or overarching themes over the runtime of Soul Diminished.” Cronin reflects, before going on to make his stance clear on the importance of lyrics and storytelling in heavy music. “As long as people are sincere about their lyrics I can get behind it. Worldbuilding and having something to say are really important, and as long as you’re sincere about what you have to say that’s cool as fuck. I’m not going to sit here and slate bands that sing about pizza, but the inception of CELESTIAL SANCTUARY was built around what I wanted to say, and I want to write lyrics for a specific reason.”
Cronin clearly has something important to say, views he wants aired to the world in a metaphorical, story-driven fashion. Soul Diminished may lack the gut-punching, plain-as-day bluntness of politically active hardcore, but CELESTIAL SANCTUARY‘s story, which draws comparisons to I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream and The Matrix, is a product of just as much inspiration of the state of world politics and injustice as you might expect from a band touting a hardcore background.
“I hate to be a negative guy because to me, music is a release. But at the same time there’s a lot to be said about what was going on in the world as Soul Diminished was being written. I started writing the album before the pandemic hit, I finished them as we were going into the pandemic and we started recording the album right at the peak.” Cronin reflects. “The main inspiration for me was mental struggle and a lack of control, coming from the rise of populist politics and politicians like Donald Trump. I know it’s cliché to say that now, but when a figure like that becomes the most powerful person in the world it’s pretty fucked. It has to make you sit back and wonder how we got here.”
“Soul Diminished is a bit of an abstract concept album. It tells the story of the journey of a soul – you remember the start of The Matrix when he’s in that goo-pod, and is basically a battery? The soul is in a vessel like that, and as the album progresses they soon realise that no matter what they do, or what they try to do, their existence is basically Hell. There’s these overbearing powers that be that control them. The way I like to see the story, there’s no direct protagonist – it’s abstract in the sense that you can relate it to a socio-political meaning that you can spin yourself, whether you think this victim is being factory farmed, or a victim of human trafficking etc.”
The UK has been crying out for a unified death metal scene for decades now. Stellar bands popping up here and there does not a scene make, but if anyone can unite the forces of VENOM PRISON, COFFIN MULCH, and the underground hordes, it’s CELESTIAL SANCTUARY. Vicious old-school death metal with a hardcore attitude, Soul Diminished is a highlight of the wider UK metal scene in recent years, and if it is anything to go by Cronin and co. are set to take the game by storm.
Soul Diminished is out now via Church Road Records.
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