ALBUM REVIEW: Horror Vacui – Sathamel
Yorkshire’s SATHAMEL are one of the premier blackened death metal acts to come out of the UK in the last few years. After changing their name from Sheol back in 2013 and releasing their excellent self titled EP, SATHAMEL quickly built a name for themselves with their intense yet melodic take on the genre. After their initial debut album had to be scrapped, and with a number of line up changes soon after, things looked quite worrying for a while. Luckily, with a new line up the band have been able to produce a new album, Horror Vacui, a record that has a far leaner and more focused sound than their early work, and could stand as their best record to date.
Libera Me is an incredibly strong opener, replete with well placed keyboard sections that add a dark ambience. The bulk of the song goes straight for the jugular, diving straight into a vicious motif that does its best to aurally assault the listener with a blitzkrieg of drums, sharp, melody tinged guitars and monstrous gutturals. It’s a ferocious track, very much in the vein of their early work, with robust rhythms driving the track and peppered with some great, caustic riffs. It sets the tone perfectly, and fully engrosses the listener throughout. Horror Vacui‘s title track is monolithic and crushing, diving headlong into an aggressive hook, tinged with melancholy, and doesn’t get any less intense as it progresses. Everything, especially the drums and guitar, has a chaotic quality to it, with Kruk‘s vocals adding plenty of further depth to proceedings, and making this already visceral track sound utterly ravenous, and cementing it as an early stand out track.
A New Age Of Lycanthropy tears out of the speakers with a suitably feral guitar passage, with the bulk of the song being significantly more intricate and measured than what’s come before, with haunting guitars, machine gun precise drumming and booming vocals coming together to create a devilish, yet focused, wall of noise with slight progressive elements that set this particular song apart from the pack. The Devil’s Hand takes a more measured and steady approach, with the soaring lead guitars taking centre stage, and marking a change in the music to a far more hook driven and impressive kind of music. The vocals, likewise, shift towards far cleaner passages, without ever fully eschewing the hellish howls and primal roars that have featured on this record up until now. It’s a fantastic track that adds further musical depth to the record, and shows that speed and aggression don’t fully define the bands sound.
Whispers Of A Husk is yet another rhythm driven song with some brilliant lead guitar elements and some truly exemplary vocal performances. It’s an incredibly forceful and powerful piece of music, with some of the most impressive guitar hooks on the whole album which is certainly saying something. It ultimately proves to be one of the best tracks on an album full of belting tunes. Świt takes the rhythm focused side of the bands sound to its natural zenith, throwing some superlative atmospherics into the mix and some more variations on the vocals, with some slight and well placed distortion separating this song, at least vocally, from the fray. It’s very much of the same ilk of the song that came before it, and possesses some of the more memorable parts of this record.
There Where Is No Time, the penultimate track, is a dense, groove-laden offering with sludgy bass line that provides a great undercurrent to the rest of the music, making the song as a whole sound tar thick in its delivery, with the vocals really coming to the fore and carrying the song from the first note to the last. It’s a very solid song that sets the listener up nicely for the ninth and final song on the record, Of Spilled Wine And Broken Glass; this is a lengthy, yet thoroughly epic affair, with plenty of chaotic musicianship thrown into the mix for good measure. Solid rhythms make for a great base on which to build some great, sublime guitars and some of the most diverse vocal performances on the record. Whereas many long songs might outstay their welcome, this song proves to be an excellent track, adding a fantastic exclamation point to an equally fantastic record.
It’s safe to say that the four year gap between the Sathamel EP and Horror Vacui has been well worth the wait. It’s clear that SATHAMEL have finally solidified their sound, completely shedding the majority of the influences that defined their earlier work to find their own voice In particular, the lead guitars have become more intricate and adventurous, without straying into the realms of self-indulgent technicality. This is, without a shadow of a doubt, SATHAMEL‘s creative zenith up to this point, and it will be interesting to see how they manage to top this exemplary album.
Rating: 10/10
Horror Vacui is out now via self release.
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