Black Curse, a Denver based Blackened Death Metal act featuring members from Primitive Man, Khemmis, Spectral Voice, Spirit Possession and more. It’s pretty clear these guys have some top tier Extreme Metal credibility. Their 2020 debut Endless Wound proved this and in fact it featured in my top albums of that year, truly a brilliant record. Here we are in 2024 though and at the dawn of a new release Burning In Celestial Poison. Can this Sepulchral Voice Records release deliver more of the Black Curse the underground has come to love?

Spleen Girt With Serpent opens proceedings with as expected total maniacal almost War Metal carnage. A Blackened Death Metal melding of sheer devastation akin in some ways to a more drawn out less Grind infused Concrete Winds. The drums are super rapid and machine gun in tone, the guitars are a mess of riffs in a fantastically and surprisingly melodic way and the vocals are a combination of the ultra-guttural and totally shrill which fits the music perfectly. It would be remiss of me not to mention that most songs on this album are pretty long, now that might seem a little detrimental given the carnage, however I frame it like this. Many Extreme Metal acts have a style that is less about each individual song and more about the journey, so in reality this album does very much the same thing as a ridiculous Gorenoise record having a twenty minute ‘untitled’ song combining multiple rapid fire tracks, in essence length is irrelevant. You could split each song into other songs but ultimately the end product is the same. I will say though it leaves each track room to experiment, the opening song being a prime example as an almost Drone-like section spaces out the track adding more dismal sounds to the chaotic mix. Trodden Flesh continues in a similar vein with added notions of Doom or Sludge sprinkled in for good all round measure. Ultimately the whole experience of this album is one of total relentlessness, pushing the barriers of extremity in Metal as a whole.

I would attest that this is perhaps different from your average Blackened Death or War Metal album however. The delivery is somewhat polished, don’t get me wrong there is still some grit in there, but I think what I’m trying to say is it actually appears relatively accessible. That is by no means to the album’s detriment and I think Black Curse do an excellent job at bringing a totally mad sound to a wider audience in the process. This album even more so than Endless Wound perhaps. Ruinous Paths… and …To Babylon appear connected in title and progression from one to the other, the decision to split them when all the other songs are long seems a little odd to me, however as highlighted before I don’t think it drastically matters. Both songs still offer some total savagery that whilst not different from anything else on the album is still of high quality. Finally, we come to Flowers Of Gethsemane, and honestly it’s here where the album actually feels quite short, I think every song, this closer included is so rampant that time simply flies by and I’m a big fan of really intense acts like this playing with long song formats, it can kind of add something to the whole album experience, in some ways it reminds me of Tardus Mortem and their outstanding Armageddon album, very similar vibes.

So, is this the most fantastic Blackened Death record I’ve ever heard? No, but it is very entertaining. Personally I don’t think it commands the same impact as Endless Wound but then the bar was set pretty high. Truth be told there isn’t actually anything I dislike on this album, sometimes the sound just doesn’t quite click and with the Concrete Winds album this year my personal bar of extremity has been raised. Burning In Celestial Poison is of course quite different to Concrete Winds and possibly more ambitious than Black Curse’s debut but ultimately there’s just something that I don’t find quite as exciting as when I heard the band’s debut. By all means though, please check it out, I mean it’s still not necessarily out of the running to make my top twenty of this year.

(8/10 George Caley)

https://blackcurse-svr.bandcamp.com/album/burning-in-celestial-poison