“Puddles of you reflect the filth within.”
Celestial Sanctuary are back once again flying the flag for aggressive UK death metal. Seething with all the hatred and gore you’d hope to find in a death metal release, Visions of Stagnant Blood is Celestial Sanctuary at their most frantic, crushing and perhaps even their darkest yet.
The band commented on Visions of Stagnant Blood, stating of the 3-track EP: “These are not B-sides, these aren’t leftovers from old recording sessions. This is Celestial Sanctuary doing what we do – creating extreme shit for extreme people.” They go on, “We writhe in the opportunity to keep making disgusting music. And this is our most vile creation yet. Death Metal is our business and business is fucking good”.
Despite an intense touring schedule around the UK and Ireland, Celestial Sanctuary have proven themselves to be a serious quartet of death metal workhorses: “We’ve been on the road playing all over the UK and Ireland, pretty relentlessly I’d say. If you’ve been to a death metal show here in the last 2 years, there’s a good chance you’ve seen us. Where other bands would be exhausted and using that as an excuse to rollover and not crack on, we thrive on it”. Evidencing this is Visions of Stagnant Blood, that in its 20-minute runtime shows the band managing to show a bit of variety, yet remain consistent. Title track “Visions of Stagnant Blood” leads the album off with Celestial Sanctuary’s typical take on a straight-ahead style of fast and intense death metal, whereas track two, “Puddles of You Reflect the Filth Within”, shows a more hardcore-influenced style of low, crushing death metal, made their own with soaring ethereal lead part. These tracks are only complimented by vocalist and guitarist Tom Cronin’s production style. It’s a good blend of convention and aggression – with a bit of reverb and/or delay thrown in occasionally to taste for a bit of added character.
Perhaps most interesting of all from the EP is the third and final track, “Gavage of the Vile”. At a whopping ten minutes in length, the band crank the droning ethereality up to eleven, beginning to enter the realm of Blood Incantation. Merging perfectly this style of thoughtful technical death metal with an edge of blackened death, I’d be very interested to see where Celestial Sanctuary go with this sound in the future. Featuring a spacey, dreamlike, and celestial drop-out section, “Gavage of the Vile” is largely aggressive and sludgy but features a resplendent, dark vastness to it occasionally that is characteristic of post-black metal such as parts of Oathbreaker. This shows Celestial Sanctuary unafraid todelve into their influences in a fashion that remains coherent with their existing style, but keeps their new music fresh. Any band around today, particularly in a genre as traditionalist as death metal, should observe how the band does this and take note, because its execution by Celestial Sanctuary is flawless.
The album is well-mixed, and JB Van Der Wal does a good job mastering. Often Visions of Stagnant Blood’s mastering is quite loud and compressed, which in this instance stylistically lends itself to the music, helping to keep the aggression high. Some dynamics are introduced on occasion via the quieter sections of “Gavage of the Vile”; however this is a lone example, with the rest of the EP one solid level. Every element of the songs is easily distinguished and sits in the correct place in the overall picture.
In conclusion, Celestial Sanctuary have once again proven the strength and legitimacy of UK death metal. The band, who are set to open the Dogtooth stage on the Saturday of this year’s Download festival, are a rising force in death metal globally, and with releases such as Visions of Stagnant Blood, is it any wonder why? With riffs as skull-crushing as any from modern genre-mainstays like Reign Supreme or Slave to the Scalpel and a unique something to the band’s sound, Celestial Sanctuary know what they are doing; the band are masters of what they do, and they refuse to stop doing it. Visions of Stagnant Blood serves to remind us of this, as well as breaking some new ground – all without straying too far left-of-field. The production is professional and lends itself stylistically to the band’s sound, complimenting what is an outstanding release that is very promising in the direction of the band’s future.
9/10
Visions of Stagnant Blood drops on the 12th June as an independent release.