Skeletonwitch return with their fifth full length album titled “Devouring Radiant Light”, another genre bending effort that sees the band bring their more darker, black metal influences to the forefront. While that harsher element makes a bold impact on the album overall, this isn’t necessarily a black metal album as the band make sure to throw in a few catches to keep you on your toes.
Skeletonwitch have been known to throw a few curveballs in their game, it’s essentially now their signature move and with their latest album “Devouring Radiant Light”, while the sound leans more overall on the harsher side with their black metal influences coming through more evident than previous releases, this is still a mixed blend of many genres all coming through seamlessly.
Starting out with what eventually becomes one of many sizeable intros, “Fen Of Shadows” gives you no mistaking it’s black metal leanings. Full of ultra fast tempos and a huge wall of guitar sound eminating through out, it’s a scorching way to introduce the album but not before it breaks off mid-way for a little more mid-tempo groove. While the black metal stuff can be found in almost every track on here, there’s only a handful of songs that portray that sound to it’s full extent – “Temple Of The Sun” is a fine example of that with blast beats and wall of neck breaking guitar riffs rocketing through although to be fair, it does have a thrashy overtone mixed with plenty of melody that almost nods it’s head to the Scandinavian melodic death metal scene.
Where the album really shines the most though is when Skeletonwitch bring out the classic guns, moments like in that old school guitar riff that kicks in off “When Paradise Fades“. The harsher vocals from Adam Clemans does give the song that melodic death metal feel but there’s a strong classic metal tone to it too, same with “The Luminous Sky” where thrash metal starts to take over completely with some blistering guitar parts. Again the vocals do mislead you into thinking it’s a black metal type thing going on but this is definitely in thrashy territory and in damn fine fashion too.
The real variety starts to rear it’s head on the back end of the album, the almost 9 minute epic song “The Vault” pulls things way back with a bit of doom metal with a touch of that droney stuff made famous by bands such as Earth and Sunn O))). But like with many of the songs on here, the band switch gears pretty quickly and before you know it, the old school flavour kicks in with some sweeping guitar harmonies thrown into the mix.
Continuing towards the end, Skeletonwitch step it up a few notches in terms of energy and speed by hitting the gas pedal with force with the quick little number that is “Carnarium Eternal“. It ends as quickly as it starts but not before breaking in with a memorable dirty and ugly riff making this one of the hidden gems of the album. Of course just as the album starts, it finishes off with some more of the blasphemic metal darkness in the hellish “Sacred Soil” which rounds things off nicely in this fairly unobtuse track. Once again Skeletonwitch deliver the goods with “Devouring Radiant Light”, it may be a little harsher than previous efforts but the quality is still top notch.
TRACKLIST
Fen of Shadows
When Paradise Fades
Temple of the Sun
Devouring Radiant Light
The Luminous Sky
The Vault
Carnarium Eternal
Sacred Soil
