One of the primary aspects I look for in war metal is the sheer venom and vitriol a record spits at you while listening. I want to feel like a record hates me and that I’m being suffocated by the combined weight of the atmosphere and riffs within. There’s been no shortage of quality war metal this year, with acts such as Endless Loss, Primitive Warfare, and Prehistoric War Cult all putting out solid records, but none of these albums exuded that sheer animosity I look for. Then Black Curse announced their new album. A supergroup composed of members from Spectral Voice, Khemmis, and Primitive Man, they shocked the underground metal scene with Endless Wound in 2020, one of the finest albums in the bestial blackened death microscene. Obviously, Black Curse had huge shoes to fill with sophomore album Burning in Celestial Poison, as the sophomore hump is the true test for bands to prove that they’re not a once-and-done affair. Thankfully, Burning in Celestial Poison not only surpasses the hump, but makes every other war metal album released this year appear as threatening as pool noodles in terms of sheer aggression and vitriol and sets a new standard for the genre.
To call Burning in Celestial Poison ambitious would be an understatement: each of the four songs (“Ruinous Paths…To Babylon” is split into two) is over ten minutes, which for any other artist in this unforgiving microgenre would be an utterly exhausting record. Burning in Celestial Poison is exhausting, but in the best way possible. The engineering throughout is genius-level work, done by the ever-talented Arthur Rizk, who also engineered the fiendish Spectral Voice from earlier in the year. Every spin of Burning in Celestial Poison uncovers something new — the immense layering of everything, leaving the songs drenched in reverb, the samples which help exude a ritualistic atmosphere I haven’t heard in war metal since Teitanblood’s Death, and masterful musicianship. Each track here is epic, with the dual guitar assault of Eli Wendler and Jonathan Campos alternating between headbanging, triumphant riffs and volcanic fretwork, the militaristic drumming by Antinom, and the snarled rasps of Eli bringing together an album that sounds like there was genuine evil involved in the recording. Surprisingly, there is no bass presence on Burning in Celestial Poison, and while that would normally be a dangerous risk for a band to take, there’s no less immensity found on here. No specific track is the standout, either, as each track has every element I look for in this punishing style of death metal.
I’ve only got into war metal over the last few years, and Black Curse has been a standout for me. I had no idea how Endless Wound would be topped, and yet shedding the doom metal elements while instead favoring an even more claustrophobic, in-your-face production style has done the impossible. This is the evil death metal record I’ve been looking for ever since getting into the more extreme side of metal ten years ago, and is one of the best albums of the year, without question.
