Sanguinary Emperor – Evocations Of Ruin 2023-2024 cassette

Sanguinary Emperor – Evocations Of Ruin 2023-2024 cassette

"From the beginning, Sanguinary Emperor has been the brainchild of prolific New Jersey-based blackened barbarian E.X., who's been hard at work befouling my speakers in recent years with other profane, warped projects like the no-fi black metal / noise-ambient of Black Blood of the Ahrimanic Chamber, the Sadean dungeon electronics of Marcabra, and Spectral Torture's atmospheric raw black metal. Most of this stuff is centered on his Summoners Chalice label, which has been a reliable go-to for me over the past year to hear some of the scuzziest, most scarifying USBM oozing out of the East Coast. But there was something special about a certain MMXXIII Demo from a new band called Sanguinary Emperor that just showed up in my Youtube feed via the excellent No Gleaming Light channel back in October '23. Rumbling out of my speakers like a tanker-spill of toxic industrial waste, that three-"song" demo instantly entranced me with its bizarre blend of Beherit-esque savagery, slow-motion mechanized plod (like something off a late-80s UK industrial metal album), incoherent but disquieting vocal sounds, and brain-damaged (or damaging) repetition. All that, and laced with these strangely imperious melodies that leaked across the glacial crush like threnodies for victims of a satanic mass-murder. Low-fi and filthy as hell, I've been obsessed with that one demo, learning that it was the work of just E.X., the same guy behind these other weird, abrasive Summoners Chalice-related bands. Leaning harder into the realm of the weirdness of stuff like Ride For Revenge, Barathrum, Legion Of Andromeda, and especially Looting The Tomb Of The Aramathean-era Black Mass of Absu, the MMXXIII Demo ended up being one of my favorite releases of the year.

Almost as soon as that hideous demo surfaced online, E.X. joined up with bassist R.S. and drummer D.T. (the latter of which also contributing additional vocal vomit) to create a new vision of Sanguinary Emperor’s bulldozing malevolence. Building on the warped, wretched heaviness of that first demo, the band quickly began crafting a new batch of songs that are even heavier and more lung-collapsing than ever: the first of these emanations was a rehearsal recording in the autumn of 2023 captured during a session on their home turf of Bayonne, New Jersey, demonstrating the trio's violent ferocity at full power, and that was fast followed by their Demo 2024, the first proper studio session from Sanguinary Emperor. Both of these recordings were self-released by the band through their Bandcamp page, and subsequently crawled their way onto the 'Tube where I discovered 'em. But now for the first time, both of these full-band recordings are collected and electronically etched into physical media, drenching you in a total twenty-one minutes of diseased, debased, barbaric rumble.

Full force filth flows from the first side of this collection, drenching you in a black tide of rotting flesh, bilious fluids, and advanced-stage rabies. The three songs that make up Sanguinary Emperor's 2024 Demo are absolutely foul, really living up to the band's self-imposed designation of "bestial doom"; now with the lineup fleshed out into a full band, guitarist / vocalist E.X. spews out an even heavier and burlier brand of blackened death doom. The new rhythm section lay out a battering ram low-end assault in painful slow-motion - where the first demo was a churning mass of near indefinable chaos, now the band sinks into deep, dome-shattering grooves that propel the blasphemy like tank-treads moving through a black bog. This shit is heavy as fuck, a blur of blackened tremolo-picked distortion and hellish riffs, caveman drumming and layered, stomach-churning shrieks and grunts, all swallowed up in huge cavernous reverb. That horrendous heaviness will sometimes fall away, leaving just the hiss of the cymbal and rumble of latent amp-scum hanging like a release of grave fumes, but whenever the band caves back in, it's like getting your spine run over by a backhoe. It's freaking gnarly, and even when they kick up the tempo into a sick punk-like mid-tempo stomp like on "Sanguinary Emperor " and "Entranced by the Inescapable Nothing", it never loses any of that septic chaos. It's definitely a different vibe than the first demo, more structured and more riff-based, but it still sounds utterly ghastly.

The two rehearsal tracks on the b-side naturally offer a rawer and immediate version of Sanguinary Emperor's sound, but it's just as absurdly heavy. Sounds like it could have been recorded in a cave, too. From the solemn opening of "Cascade...Into Everlasting Night" that builds into a primitive, droning trance awash in churning waves of distortion, to the grinding and hypnotic death-dirge "Ruination Fires Burn", these earlier tracks are a bridge between the more messed-up, Abruptum-esque demonic chaos of the first demo and the crushing black doom of the 2024 demo songs. Just as heavy as the rest of it, but more pared down to simple, mesmeric riff structures that ooze over you like black fluids."