This is the second album from Sijjeel, a death metal band from Saudi Arabia.
Returning to dish out more punishment after 2022’s brutal Salvation Within Insanity, Sijjeel are back with an even bigger hammer to smash in your ungrateful face with. Yep, it’s time for another slab of crushing death metal, so prepare to get smushed.
Despite having an intro track, (imaginatively called Intro), it’s no waste of space. Rather, it’s an instrumental of tangled writhing contortion that sets a labyrinthine scene prior to first song Descendent Incertitude exploding with brutality.
Presenting as a denser, more involved, more unforgiving version of their previous selves, Affiliation of Horrid Containment is arguably more extreme than Sijjeel’s past work. It’s definitely harsher and more abrasive. It also has less instant appeal, (although certainly far from none), and instead plays the long game, dragging the listener back again and again with its brutal darkness and intricate delivery. The songs are complex and merciless. They emphasise a combination of muscular heaviness, murky malevolent presence, and twisting convolutions.
Affiliation of Horrid Containment is a 40-minute hymn to savagery and carnage. Fans of bands such as Defeated Sanity and Disentomb need to pay attention to this hideous slab of unpleasantness.
Highly recommended.
Wonderbox Metal 