Sulphur Aeon – Seven Crowns and Seven Seals (Review)

Sulphur Aeon are a German death metal band and this is their fourth album.

Long after 2015’s Gateway to the Antisphere and 2018’s The Scythe of Cosmic Chaos shook the death metal underworld, Sulphur Aeon returns to sow chaos and discord once again. A great slumbering monster awakens.

Across 46 minutes Seven Crowns and Seven Seals demonstrates in no uncertain terms why Sulphur Aeon’s previous two aforementioned albums are so highly regarded. This new platter of music finds Sulphur Aeon’s blend of dark brutality and malevolent Lovecraftian atmosphere in fine unfettered form. There is a lot going on here, more than is the norm for a band of this ilk, but then Sulphur Aeon have always been a cut above the rest.

Seven Crowns and Seven Seals offers a blackened journey into death metal’s foulest and most mysterious waters. There are six songs on this new album, and each one paints a compelling tapestry of dark wonders and malignant terrors for the listener to explore. Richly horror-filled melodies and grim rhythmic expressions power much of the music, building structures of malefic grace. The songs balance heaviness against texture, searing intensity against open-mouthed invitation, and deathly aggression against atmospheric depth.

Sulphur Aeon’s new work is absorbing and multifaceted. The band’s component parts have come together in such ways that each track offers a world of its own, ripe with glorious heights and terrifying lows. Sulphur Aeon have such sights to show you, and they do so in myriad ways. This collection of songs is Sulphur Aeon at their most diverse and their most expressive. The band have clearly thrown everything into this album, and the results are seriously good.

Seven Crowns and Seven Seals demonstrates that Sulphur Aeon’s creativity continues to reach new peaks. This is their most engrossing, richly textured, melodically sinister, and grotesquely blackened emanation to date. It really is a superb record, and I deem it utterly essential listening for any fan of black/death metal.