ALBUM REVIEW: Umbra Mortis – She Must Burn

If you’re new to SHE MUST BURN, then allow us to clue you in: the release show for their debut album Grimoire took place at a sold out Black Heart in Camden and their new album Umbra Mortis will be marked by a release show at Islington’s O2 Academy. But perhaps most importantly of all, know this: since their self-titled 2016 EP, they have toured with the likes of CRADLE OF FILTH and LORNA SHORE. That last fact alone is actually the perfect piece of info for you to know what they sound like. Because the London-based sextet plays a performative, melodic, blackened deathcore that manages to perfectly meld the influence of both of those bands.

Across 10 tracks (including one intro track that we’ll pick a bone with shortly), SHE MUST BURN paint a dramatic, ferocious and arresting picture that is perfectly represented by the cover art that adorns Umbra Mortis. Tracks like Incantation are the bold black brushstrokes that make up much of the artwork’s central figure. Unrelenting and all-consuming, it’s a track of excessive force, particularly from a vocal standpoint. Kyle Lamb delivers a modern deathcore masterclass with a staggering range on his guttural roars and throat-shredding growls, gnashing and tearing at the microphone like a rabid rottweiler possessed by some seventh circle-dwelling beast. 

The blood red curtains and stately pillar are the instrumentation of Umbra Mortis. Dramatic and grand, guitarists Jack Higgs and James Threadwell, bassist Frankie Keating and drummer Steve Padley lay a stunning bed of rich, affecting melodic deathcore. Where the guitars chug and churn, the rhythm section rumbles and rolls. It means that songs like The Rats In The Walls are well paced and restless, building to a riotous crescendo. Misery Eternal meanwhile gives each instrument room to breathe, and the members playing them are able to show off their own technical prowess under Lamb‘s vocal lines that could easily have stolen the whole show.

And then we get into the details of it all: that enticing fruit, those gleaming fangs, the deadly dagger. SHE MUST BURN employ a wicked combination of delicate keys and secondary vox through Valis Volkova to add the real drama. Even on numbers like The Serpent which for the most part is amongst the heaviest offerings on the album, there are stabs of ethereal beauty and slashes of angelic splendour. To have these elements combined so competently and convincingly is a real achievement in itself and lends a real beauty and the beast quality to Umbra Mortis.

Now that aforementioned bone that needs picking – the intro track, Nine (please stop naming songs after numbers that don’t match the track listing) is a sub-90 second number that features Volkova singing over dramatic strings and keys. That in and of itself is fine, and it’s competently made. But it feels like a disjointed façade when The Rats In The Walls sends the sound into an all-out free fall into hellacious, barbaric noise. While there are elements of that opening throughout the album, this ultimately ends up feeling like something from a different record entirely.

Overall though, SHE MUST BURN have produced an impressive album in Umbra Mortis. Decadent, destructive and delicious, this will scratch the itch of fans of Dani Filth and Will Ramos alike, and stands out as one of 2022’s most theatrical releases.

Rating: 7/10

Umbra Mortis is out now via Grey Rock Music.

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