Sentient Ruin is starting 2021 by showing no mercy upon the metal world with the upcoming limited edition vinyl release from the sadistic French occult black metal outfit, Novae Militiae. For their third full-length album, “Topheth,” the band conjures up one scorching and blasphemous extreme sounding opus.
Right away this is not your typical black metal album with low-fi production quality and the same recycled Mayhem and Darkthrone riffs that end up losing listeners after the first few tracks. From the very beginning you are gripped by a merciless force that delivers one agonizing tale of pestilent artistic creativity. The album’s production is utterly flawless in terms of how the band is able to capture their abysmal lyrical themes by writing and recording some insidious sounding compositions.
On the album’s first track, “Towards the Sitra Achra,” Novae Militiae begins by providing listeners a glimpse into an inhuman sounding environment of sacrilegious horror. Eventually the guitar parts come frantically screaming into the picture by constructing these tormenting riffs to welcome the gruesome sounding vocals. Adding to the already morbid landscape, the band also uses some ritualistic chants to provide contrast to the tormented growls. Overall, there is a tidal wave of blood soaked chaos that comes out of that first track and on the next song, “Advent of the Prophet,” the band slashes away at more vile sounding compositions. I will say that the riffs are nothing I have not heard before, although Novae Militiae knows when to change it up in order to leave impact on the listener.
Two songs that I thought really stood out on this album were, “Faithfully Reduced to Ashes” and “Elevated to Him." All around the musicianship is extremely tight sounding and there is such confidence in the delivery of the band’s instrumental arrangements. Any band can write satanic themed extreme metal, however, if they cannot write a profound piece of music then they are just another gimmicky band that probably will end up getting featured on a shitty local show and then breakup the next week after the singer gets drunk fails to show up to practice. Until the very end of the album Novae Militiae kept hammering out sinister sound cuts of fiendish black metal and tracks like, “Afflictions of the Divine” and “The Table of Revelations” never lose that sickening devotion to crafting unholy musical offerings of limitless horror.
“Topheth,” is definitely going to be an album that extreme metal fans are going to want check out if they have not already. Also, people might want to grab a copy of the limited edition three-sided double LP with etched D-side being released through Sentient Ruin January 22 (Will leave link below!). As I noted earlier, this style of black metal is more dynamic and incorporates more elements from other extreme musical influences to achieve an utterly abhorrent and bellicose sound that should be taken very seriously. I don’t know what 2021 has in store after last year’s whacky bullshit, but musically I am feeling fairly confident that extreme metal will be doing well after hearing what Novae Militiae had to offer!
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