ALBUM REVIEW: Sentient Divide – Haunted By Cruelty

SENTIENT DIVIDE are back with their second album of morbid Blackened Death Metal ferocity, out now via Expansion Abyss.

Violent instrumentals immediately bombarde a scathing blend of crushingly and creepy riffs, intricately booming drums and howled gutturals with a monstrously huge production that is reverberate and dripping in filth. Aside from the obliterating intensity of their magnificent Death Metal, Sentient Divide have a noticeable influx of Black Metal dissonance edging its way into the music which adds to the frenzied and claustrophobic might of the record gorgeously.

Storms of vitriol and putridity are packed into the album, each sections bringing something might and necessary to the sound of the band with plentiful doomy sections that draw on the atmospheric side of things to unnerve and add momentum to the monolith of brutality. This inferno of ravenously dark Extreme Metal delves into some of the more estranged, spectral corners of the genre and makes for a marvellously interesting listen with endless killer soundscapes that are refreshing and memorable. Bellowing and bristling with chaotic malice, this is some ridiculously gripping and haunting material, truly an experience to behold.

Shrouded in a glistening aura of disdain and fiercely ambient, this unsettling slab of Death Metal excellency is one not to pass by, proving the depths of the underground has some of the finest sounds, as usual. Marvellously well executed and excitingly eerie, this groove-packed monolith of stoic Death Metal brilliance will have all fans of the genre entranced in its supernatural glow of hatred. There is plenty of diversity to capture the huge range of the bands ideas well, each being strung together carefully to make for a transcendently intricate listen that is violent yet beautifully atmospheric and hits with demonic strength.

This violent spearhead of damnation will pierce the hearts of any listener. It is bold, superbly written and marvellously intense with an unrelenting energy of unexplainable horrors betwixt the vacuous flow of unfathomably great Death Metal barbarism. -9/10