ALBUM REVIEW: A Sire To The Ghouls Of Lunacy – Veilburner

Pennsylvania’s VEILBURNER are perhaps one of the most impressive and unique extreme metal acts in the United States. Since their formation in 2014, VEILBURNER have been incredibly prolific when it comes down to writing and recording new music, with four full length records coming in as many years, each more interesting and bizarre than the last, blending black and death metal with lots of great experimental flourishes which sets their sound apart from the vast majority of their peers in the underground. VEILBURNER‘s fourth record, A Sire To The Ghouls of Lunacy, sees them take their dark, avant-garde sound to even greater heights, and create what is, to date, their absolute creative zenith.

Introvertoid helps to start this album on an incredibly high note. Rather than go straight for the jugular musically, this is a much more reserved track, centred around clean guitar tones, steady yet intricate drumming and sonorous vocals. When the song proper makes its presence known, it launches into a razor sharp, fearsome piece of music that borders on tech-death in its complexity and technicality. The vocals range from the aforementioned clean vocals through to acerbic howls and bowel-looseningly deep gutturals. This song gradually shifts into a phase characterised by melodious passages and subtle psychedelic flourishes, which helps to add plenty of variety and musical depth to the sound of this song, before launching into a borderline chaotic motif that brings the song to its closing moments. It’s a great opener that sets the bar high right off the bat.

A Sire To The Ghouls of Lunacy‘s second track, Panoramic Phantoms, is a thick, powerful song with dizzying lead guitars and vicious vocals that range from hellish screams to soaring clean passages and dense, domineering gutturals. Backed by a tight, steady drum beat, the track has a few experimental moments, particularly in the way that the guitar playing is approached, which make for a song that possesses solid, impressive rhythms with jarring, disjointed hooks, all wrapped up in a bleak and oppressive atmosphere that gives this song just a slight air of epicness, which contrast with the grating and fierce sound of the song incredibly well. Agony On Repeat, with its jarring, caustic lead guitars and cacophonous drumming, is a brilliantly dark and rabid track with plenty of progressive elements thrown in to the mix for good measure. With some twisted, eclectic vocals and a dense, crunching guitar tone, it’s simultaneously heavy and varied, allowing both sides of VEILBURNER‘s sound to come to the fore, showcasing just how diverse their style is throughout. It’s a juddering, fierce piece of music, which helps to further expand the scope of the sound on offer, and serves as another amazing piece of music that straddles the line between intensity and the avant-garde.

Abbatoir Noir is a far more different song than the others that have come before it. With some great, clean guitar parts, it proves to be a haunting yet bleak slab of blackened death metal with a solid, experimental edge to it. With ethereal and airy guitars, a noticeably thick and bubbling bass hook, and authoritative drumming, musically this is very strong, with some impressive, tar thick gutturals providing contrast with the sublime quality of the music. As the song progresses, it slowly but surely begins to incorporate darker and more progressive elements, which do a great job of making this song thoroughly engrossing and interesting from the first note to the last. Even though this song is starkly less intense than the three songs that came before it, it nonetheless packs an almighty punch.

A Sire To The Ghouls of Lunacy‘s title track proves to be one of its most intense and ferocious, right as it bursts out the speakers. The music is speed-driven, eclectic and visceral throughout, which helps to make it stand out form the pack significantly. This is a chaotic, cacophonous piece of music, with some impressive gutturals, sharp, intricate drumming and plenty of genuinely brilliant guitar hooks. There’s tonnes of eerie, off kilter guitar parts that manage to add a lot of weirdness and progression to the sound of this monstrous song, and not a single note sounds out of place here. This is a dark and ferocious song, ans stands as one of the more aggressive songs on the whole record. Glory Glory Grotesque, with its robust, discordant opening motif, is a song that showcases some of the most impressive and imaginative drumming on the whole record, with several well placed, melodic flourishes peppered throughout the generally sombre and visceral music that makes up the bulk of this track. With a few electronic parts thrown in for good measure, this song has plenty of musical depth and tight, acerbic aggression, with lots of crushing, granite heavy guitar tones to help make this song every bit as vicious, dark and bestial as it can be. It’s unerringly grim and monstrous from start to finish, and proves to be one of the albums heavier offerings, as well as one of its most musically diverse.

Upstream and Parallel, the albums penultimate track, is a fierce, driven piece of music with a sound that is solidly rooted in death metal. This energetic, frenetic slab of brutality contains some of the most intricate and impressive performances on the whole album, from the thunderous, tight drumming through to the varied vocals on offer, which range from dense gutturals to arid, hellish shrieks. There’s some truly inspired and imaginative guitar hooks, which help to make the already intense sound even more expansive and huge. The final third of this track gives way to bleak, haunting atmospherics, with a steady, primal drum beat backing the grim and palpable ambience incredibly well. It’s an excellent track that sets the listener up for the eighth and final track, Where Torment Has Danced Before, really well. This last song begins as a slow, dirging track with some well placed melodic licks peppered liberally throughout, and suddenly bursts into life, with vast, epic guitar chords and soaring, visceral vocals grabbing the listeners attention fairly quickly. The lead guitars shift from one amazing motif to another, ensuring that there’s plenty of great hooks in this song from start to finish. For the most part, this track is a measured, mid-paced affair, but it gradually gains momentum, and towards it’s climactic moments, it quickly quickens the pace, until the music is chaotic, cacophonous and utterly discordant. It’s a great way to bring this equally great album to a close.

A Sire To The Ghouls Of Lunacy is a truly brilliant album, with lots of interesting musicianship and dark tones which help to make this record sound oppressively extreme without losing any of the elements that make VEILBURNER‘s music catchy and memorable. It’s a great follow up to The Obscene Rite, and builds on the many strengths of that record, resulting in a sound that is not only more robust and tight, but also more progressive and intriguing. VEILBURNER manage to bridge the gap between the fierce and aggressive and music that is more sublime and atmospheric, without it seeming contrived or forced at any point. Without a shadow of a doubt this is one of the more eclectic and memorable extreme metal records of the year, and could very well stand out as a late coming album of the year candidate.

Rating: 9/10

A Sire To The Ghouls Of Lunacy is due for release December 28th via Transcending Obscurity Records. 

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