The good news is that little has changed in their camp. The core still consists of the couple Emily Ruskell or Emily Witch as she likes to be called here and Nick Ruskell aka Necroskull. Their longtime skin basher David Wilbrahammer did finish this latest record with them, but has since then left the band and so has been replaced in the meantime on stage by Scott ‘Doom’ Taylor.

Worshipping at the altars of Cathedral, Black Sabbath and to some extent Electric Wizard since their very first demo in 2008, the threesome clearly has no intention to stray from that path 18 years later. And thankfully so.

Maybe it feels like they fell off the face of the Earth since 2018, but in fact they have always been around in some fashion, just taking a really long time to get everything written and recorded with a few important gigs on the side like a slot on the well-known English Bloodstock festival.

The love this band has for the genre of doom is abundantly clear with every bended note they play. Picked up originally by Lee Dorrian’s Rise Above Records for their first two albums before they got signed by Candlelight for ‘No Light, Only Fire’ and ‘Hexenhammer’, they’ve always had doom running through their veins.  Decidedly British, they’re still on a UK label now for the new record as well, namely Church Road Records.

Compared to the previous record, they wanted to go back to some of the slower stuff for the new material. We’re not talking funeral doom levels which lack momentum here, but something of a harkening back to the classic doom sounds of say early Cathedral, for instance. They never went full grindhouse like Obourne and co did or followed the rabbit hole too deeply down the prog hole. Instead, they stayed the course of pure true doom. The album opener ‘Omnia Fiuntur’ is a prime example of that. The ringing bells could have come straight off Black Sabbath’s debut and the whole thing is as lethargic as a bedridden patient.

‘Bacchus’ which also got a nice video is primarily an homage to Wizard with a real fuzzy feel and pumping bass lines. ‘Hades Chains’ has a bit more of an old-school proto-thrash vibe in a Celtic Frost kind of way. One of the rare up-tempo moments. Contrary, ‘Altar’ aptly worships the unholy tritone again. The whole album is one great declaration of love towards the genre. ‘In Triumph We Rot!!!’ even recalls ‘Doom All Over the World’ from Finnish doomlords Reverend Bizarre.

It wouldn’t be a proper doom album without a classic Hammer-style film sample, so that’s what we get on ‘Lamentation’ before the final nail ‘A Quintessence of Dust’ is driven into doom’s coffin. Rather uncharacteristically, the guys let loose with some crazy soloing towards the end before the bells appear again to herald the end.

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