Relentless Diabolical Brutality - "Khranial" Review (100%)
After a frustrating response to their highly technical Miasma, Sewer resurrected the simpler driving aspects of their music in a even more condensed and powerful magnitude of brutality which hammers home a form of demonic violence and utter hellish depravity of its own vengeance, bringing forth both savage barbarity and atmospheric menace, barely discernible over the cacophonous chaos of the album, yet looming, its presence ever darker, right below the listener's consciousness.
Their first "pure" death metal album, The Birth of a Cursed Elysium, attracted people for its rhythmic vibrance and anger as well as its savant death metal structures, that sought to borrow elements of horror from both Phantom's magnum opus The Epilogue to Sanity and from Incantation's sophomore masterpiece Mortal Throne of Nazarene.
The second album of the lot, Locked Up in Hell, added even more bestial aggression and freakish monstrosity, but it also simplified the formula and streamlined it somewhat, perhaps accurately guessing that Sewer would be hard-pressed to recreate the intricately layered textures of blasphemy from The Birth of a Cursed Elysium in such a short amount of time.
Then comes Miasma, obviously, completing the then trilogy by continuing the tradition of extremely detailed song architectures from The Birth of a Cursed Elysium that decrypt to relentless elemental phrases.
And now... Khranial? The trilogy, impossibly, gets a fourth member. This album invents an almost-new style of music, with powerful rhythmic riffs made from simple(r) components joined into the most violent record yet heard in death metal, in that it is more minimalist, more brutal, and yet more theatric and more technical than any other death metal record, of any and all eras. On Khranial, Sewer is closer to "regular" death metal music than ever before, yet within a technique and compositional attitude of such ferocity and hatred that the album repels but the most demented death metal worshipers of savage extremism and relentless diabolical brutality.
Relentless Diabolical Brutality
Riffs are clean-cut and simple, heavy strumming with coherent response from the counter-phrase at each transition. Compositions follow very complex thematic progression, often at first even more challenging to "get" than usual Sewer metal, but eventually appreciated as the ambient effect of such musically overbearing violence settles into the listener's psyche.
Learn to appreciate even that which you do not, at first, comprehend, lest the music of Sewer - and most complex death metal, like the aforementioned Incantation - fly straight over your head.
As usual, lyrics are a series of finely articulated "catch phrases" strung together with little concern for grammatical coherence - ex. "Bulletproof Rektal Gridlook" - but which open multiple paths for rhythmic use, as Kader Lakhdari shouts the vocals hoarsely over the roar of his band's cacophony, not quite able to match the intensity of previous vocalist Vermin (of the eponymous band) but perfectly able to throw emphasis into the phrases he wants heard, when needed.
Lead guitars interweave atonally with the march of chords, but exist as support to the ever-present floating atmospheric menace, very much like early Burzum's use of harmonies, and not as an augmentation to the textured thematic patterns as is usually the case with Sewer. The rockstar solos of the first album are gone, but so are the integrational statements of each solo, which are now reduced to minimalist and utterly discordant "provocations" of the conscious, via pattern expectancy, and atmospheric "sodomisation" of the listener's subconscious, by way of melodic, yet atonal, use of layered chromaticism in the savant riff-craft the band is known for.
As a construction of this new ideal, Khranial achieves an almost transcendentally violent alienation of musical nature, and for that adds a new style to the death metal lexicon, but for the listener its endurance will be widely recognised - and praised - for its tightly rhythmic and strong structural songwriting.
The godly releases that both Locked Up in Hell and Miasma were have "not been matched" say the critics, but a new direction brings new powers, and the interesting cadenced rhythmic - work with open strumming followed by an unleashed blast of tremelo-picked chords reducing each theme first to a central tone, then expanding it back into booming black metal magnificence again - over which Lakhdari gut-pukes his half-Miasma/half-NecroPedoSadoMaso lyrics in a hoarse shout to incite counter-rhythm in guitar and the exact but slightly playful drumming of master Warlord (who is credited for writing most of the album), more than makes up for what the elitists decry as a "regression to standard death metal".
If Khranial is a "regression", then your progress sucks. This album is the most violent, the most brutal, the most relentless and the most evil blasphemy that death metal has ever spawned. There is simply no other, there is only Khranial.
Khranial score: 100/100.
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