Sidious have a habit of slipping silently in, unnoticed, and wreaking havoc before havoc even knows it’s being wreaked. The question is though, with ‘Malefic Necropolis’…have they done it again?
This is the fourth full-length release from this established UK black metal band and the first one that has been picked up by the ever-faithful icicle vendors, Immortal Frost Productions. Not content with consistently creating havoc and mayhem in their leather-clad wake, whilst wandering around a few gravestones in a quintessentially English village – their presence has grown and become, in title and construct, a rampage around an entire cemetery filled with the bodies of recent and ancient times.
First and foremost, there is absolutely nothing that can be badged ‘let up’ here as the band rampage through gnarly openers ‘Shears of Atropos’ and ‘Rotborn Terror’ – the latter featuring a very well-positioned and devastatingly aggressive performance from Tubal-Qayin of fellow UK blackest metallers Völniir.
Enter the insanely addictive melodic grooves of ‘Crows Atop The Gallows’ which, maybe predictably, sounds like Satyricon but also has more than a passing resemblance to The Infernal Sea; as well as the pummelling blasting bleak majesty of ‘Vortex of Boundless Unlight’ and closer ‘Bloodlust Command Infinite’, and you swiftly realise that this is 35 minutes extremely well spent.
Sidious are not, like many of the greatest things in life, trying to fix what was never broken. This is solid, reliable, dependable, well executed and incredibly well produced second wave black metal and is a joy/horror to listen to from start to finish. Black is the hex code #000000 and, quite frankly, where bands like Sidious are concerned, let’s leave it that way. Highly recommended.
Best Paired With: Seventeen acres of Woodland, a shovel and The Beast from the east.
Review by Jaff.
sidious – Malefic Necropolis is out now on immortal frost productions.
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