ORGREL - The Abyssal Terror Vinyl

Since the arrival of their debut album, Red Dragon's Invocation, in 2021 and the EP The Oath of the Black Wolf a year later, ORGREL have indeed been feeding the Beast. A band literally out of time, the Italian power-trio hailed the ancient days of black metal - the days too often forgotten, in the late '90s, when labels like Solistitium, Sombre, and Drakkar began releasing obsidian gems during the genre's post-sensationalism fallout. Rich with righteous fury and triumph alike, both records synthesized mystical splendor and dizzying delirium into a joint treatise on those too-often-forgotten days, engrossing to the very last notes: reverence, not regression.

And now, ORGREL return to feed that Beast once again, making a bloodpact with the PURITY THROUGH FIRE stronghold for their third album. Truly titled, The Abyssal Terror is both a summation and an extension of the Italians' already-considerable strengths. With an acutely vintage flat-yet-full production, ORGREL here rip forth with one bloodlusting anthem after another, stacking invigorating melodicism atop impassioned surge - one where the listener fully feels every last riff, rhythm, and holler deep in their bones. If anything, the preceding EP signaled a slight shift toward dirtier and perhaps less-mystical territory, but The Abyssal Terror rights the balance with gruffer, fuller-throated vocals and, at times, a subtle suggestion of epic traditional metal; in an abstracted sense, the latter could be attributed to a deeper dive into black metal's oldest roots. Either way, ORGREL once again display an effortless mastery of songwriting and execution, a symbiosis of medieval machismo and feral wanderlust: The Beast shall be fed by The Abyssal Terror!