Purgatorial – Fading Whispers of Voidbound Souls

Band: Purgatorial
Title: Fading Whispers of Voidbound Souls
Label: These Hands Melt
Release date: November 22nd, 2024
Country: United Kingdom
Format reviewed: High-Quality Digital Recording

I love finding new bands from the underground scene, I never forget that even the biggest bands were unknown back in the day, so I never know when I can find gold… In this case I was presented to Purgatorial by a cool person and I couldn’t resist giving it a listen, and after that I decided to write a review of their album, simply ‘cause I enjoyed what was infecting my ears…

What this trio from the UK do with their music is to down tune their guitars and bass and create a dark wall of sound that totally engulfs the listener from the moment they press the “play” button. The ominous string work is held by drums, played with efficiency/heaviness enough to result overwhelming. In a good sense, of course!

You know you are in for a devastating ride when “Harvesting Nightmares” kicks in and you feel dragged to a sinister and pitch black atmosphere. The first two minutes of the opener track are a sonic wave of distortion and you can feel these low tuned riffs permeating your bones. Drums start playing at a slow tempo but not even a minute has passed when the bass pedal starts steaming and cymbals are smashed repeatedly, along with a great repertoire of beats and kicks for you to enjoy… And when vocals enter, damn, you feel a total sinister ambiance that chills you completely. These low growls, you gotta love them, I bet.

Sometimes the aggression is so damn hard that you feel your ears pulverized, as in “Blind Fervour”, where distorted riffs and the intense drumming literally can melt your brain, along with the brutal growls and screams, does this throat belong to a beast?? But then, near the last minute this song turns into a different thing, a Death/Doom passage tries to soften the previous sonic annihilation with its sinister tone…

What I like the most about this album is that songs have multiple turns, I mean it’s not that a track is just aggression from start to finish; it can incorporate changes in tempos, even slow parts, but the thing is: the ominous feeling is maintained all through the 35 minutes it lasts. It’s dark, heavily dark, painfully dark… and I love it.

“Always Watching” is an instrumental track that brings you from doomed realms to the most crazy tempos. Your mood goes from feeling the purest agony to standing up and fighting for your life against invisible threats, and to being devoured by all that suffering again. Always immersed in the shadows. Because light has totally disappeared. And then, “Call of the Void” comes with the heaviest artillery to annihilate the last traces of sanity that you still could keep. But fear not; the closing track, “Doomed to Repeat”, will recompose you (well… kind of), and leave you craving for more.

Being this a young and new band and releasing an album of this level, makes me think that we should be expecting nothing but greatness coming from them in the near future. 9/10 by Sílvia

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9/10 Epic Storm
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