ALBUM REVIEW: Sacred Rites & Black Magick – Stormruler

It’s hard to think of a band within black metal that has experienced a rise to prominence as meteoric as that of STORMRULER. Since their formation in 2019, and with only an excellent debut album in Under The Burning Eclipse under their belts, the Missouri-based duo of Jesse Schobel and Jason Asberry have managed to craft some of the best, most compelling melodic black metal of the last decade, drawing comparisons to legendary acts such as DISSECTION and DAWN in the process. The band’s latest release Sacred Rites & Black Magick may very well be one of the most anticipated black metal records of the year, and thankfully, the music that it contains more than lives up to the hype surrounding it.

After the brief, acoustic-driven Hymns Of The Slumbering Race, the album proper begins with Internal Fulmination Of The Grand Deceivers – an incredibly fast and lean slab of black metal, with angular guitars, shrieking vocals and precise drumming that create a tight and catchy sound. It’s punchy and absolutely saturated with excellent riffs, imaginative interludes and twists that help to grab the listener’s attention, and more importantly maintain it. The next substantial track comes in the form of To Bear The Twin Faces Of The Dragon, a song with a ferocious approach to the previous track’s formula, with slick guitar work and intricate rhythms capturing its energy and epic qualities while some chaotic bursts and visceral vocal deliveries inject a venomous edge into the mix. The fleeting, folky In Light Of Paleblood bleeds seamlessly into Entranced Within The Moon Presence, another fantastic, adventurous piece of music with animated guitars and a percussive, cavernous drum sound which only adds to the hugeness of the sound, resulting in a fuller, grandiose feel.

Invocation Of The Black Sacrament – a short instrumental piece with soaring harmonised guitars – serves as a great preamble to the album’s titular track, a darkly bombastic juggernaut with magnificent leads and acerbic, wraith-like howls. It applies the sort of polished and focused musicianship that has defined earlier offerings, but with a distinct, brooding side that sets it apart from what has preceded it. Similarly, Ten Heralds, Ten Desolations, marks an effective shift in tone, with the pace and songwriting providing an urgent, rabid style right off the bat. It’s a short, sharp shock of a song that leaves an impact with chunkier, frenetic hooks and bestial vocals, eschewing some of the melodicism that has dominated the album’s sound so far, but without sacrificing any of the catchiness.

In The Shaded Vlasian Forest follows in a similar vein, with jarring passages creating a grating sound that serves as a stark counterpoint to the riff-centric bent of the leads. The cleaner tones and dramatic spoken word that comes towards the track’s closing moments lends a great cinematic side to this track, further establishing it as a memorable piece. Apparitions Across The Ravencrest is a mid-paced, powerful track, with the slower tempo allowing its brilliance to become more apparent. Soaring guitar, meaty heavy metal inspired rhythms and intricate drumming lay an excellent foundation, with some of the best vocal performances on the record taking a central role in the music. Upon Frozen Shores adopts a steady and expansive sound, with the glorious hooks vying with caustic vocals to create a stunning sound with just enough aggression and intensity to help make it a weighty and engrossing listen, covering a lot of ground musically without sounding too crowded.

Along The Appian Way, with its solid, folky feel, is an impressive and immersive track that, perhaps more than any of the earlier tracks, matches the fantasy elements within the lyrics with a bombastic style, making it even easier to get absorbed in. The guitars dance around thunderous drums and bellicose vocals, providing a power metal flourish to the sound which perfectly complements the music’s harsher tone. The haunting blend of ambience and acoustics offered up by By Winters Long Passed sets the listener up for the album’s climactic salvo, A Malice Dead & Cold, quite well. This proves to be lengthier and broader in its musical scope than any of the earlier tracks, combining a granite heavy rhythmic undercurrent with delicate melodies and piercing, banshee screams which take the vocal range up to its higher reaches and remain there for the majority of the track. As the song progresses, the pace quickens and the music gradually shifts to a darker, more urgent sound, resulting in perhaps the most blistering and monstrous sounding track on the record, and bringing proceedings to a close with a roar rather than a whimper.

At nearly 75 minutes in length and with 20 separate tracks contained within it, this is a daunting album in its size and scope, and it’s hard to believe that a band, especially one comprised of just two people, have not only crafted that much music, but that the vast majority of it works as well as it does. Some of the instrumental tracks, especially the ones that appear earlier on the record, stall the momentum of the album somewhat, and much like the band’s debut album, there are way too many of them. This minor gripe notwithstanding, this is a thoroughly impressive record, and the various instrumental pieces do, to be fair, allow for a wider range of influences, from dark ambient to medieval folk, to creep into the album’s sound fairly prominently, making for a hugely eclectic sounding record. With music as excellent as that displayed on Sacred Rites & Black Magick, and their upcoming European tour in support of CANNIBAL CORPSE and DARK FUNERAL next year, STORMRULER feel like a band that are on the cusp of establishing themselves as one of black metal’s premier up and coming acts in the very near future.

Rating: 9/10

Sacred Rites & Black Magick is out now via Napalm Records.

Like STORMRULER on Facebook.