(written by Islander)
We ran out of fingers. It took all 10 of them and one toe to count the number of articles we’ve published here about the London band Cult Burial, all of them in just the last five years. The attention began with the release of their 2020 debut EP Sorrow and has continued through their release of numerous singles, another EP, and two albums. Now this duo of Simon Langford and César Moreira will release a third album in September named Collapse of Pattern, Reverence of Dust.
The new album is described in these haunting and harrowing words:
Collapse of Pattern, Reverence of Dust is a record about erosion — of structures, of certainty, of meaning. Across eight tracks, Cult Burial tears through the frameworks we cling to, carving out something that sits between aggression and despair, weight and absence. The music is dense and layered, yet unafraid of space; at times claustrophobic, at others stripped to bare wire and exposed edge.
Each song peels back the layers between memory and oblivion, order and chaos. Built on jagged riffs and drenched in haunting textures, this album traces the gradual decay of mind, identity, and ritual. From the first shudder of collapse to that final, ash-choked breath, it offers no solace.
Cult Burial‘s music is known as a confluence of black, death, and doom metal. The first preview of how the band alchemized these ingredients on the new album was the song “Collapse“, which we explored at length in the most recent of those 11 previous NCS articles, including the song’s poetic but unsettling lyrics. Listen to this elaborate jaw-dropper of a track now if you haven’t already:
Today we share “Beseech“, the second song to be revealed from the album so far.
As described above, the music is “dense and layered” but also “stripped to bare wire and exposed edge.” As the musical pieces emerge, evolve, and either dissolve or become violently fractured, the song’s moods also change.
What happens in the opening seconds could easily have been extended longer. Those deep droning tones and the eerily warping electronic radiations around them create an experience of chilling futuristic menace; with more time they could have woven a cold spell. But instead Cult Burial chose to blast that emerging spell apart.
Suddenly, without warning, they discharge a dense storm of scathing riffage, furious beats, and berserk howls — and within that storm piercing notes wildly swirl, an immediately arresting display of ecstatic delirium.
As the drums vividly rumble and crack and the vocals savagely roar and violently scream, the riffing changes, channeling its own delirium, a frantically rising and falling hornet-swarm of sound that seems charged with angst, again pierced by those glittering sonic swirls.
The furious intensity of the assault is massive, and the lead-guitar’s rapidly whirling exuberance never loses its electrifying appeal, though it has competition from a quick gravel-toned bass solo. But the song also briefly becomes dark and oppressive — in advance of another eruption of breathtaking magnificence, which in its explosive fervor could indeed be interpreted as beseeching.
Shorter than “Collapse“, “Beseech” is a more non-stop rush of eye-popping extravagance, but it too is a spectacle of many facets, most strikingly revealed in those whirling dervish adventures of the lead-guitar, which become the song’s biggest hook, albeit an unusual one. See for yourselves:
Collapse of Pattern, Reverence of Dust will be released on September 5th. It was mixed by Greg Dawson at BWC Studios and it was mastered by the master of heaviness Brad Boatright at AudioSiege. The intriguing cover art is the work of Legerdemain.
The album will be presented on two vinyl variants of 100 copies each; the first 100 pre-orders include an exclusive LGRDMN A3 print of the album artwork. The album will also be available on a jewel-case CD edition, and digitally. All are available for pre-order now.
PRE-ORDER:
https://cultburial.bandcamp.com/album/collapse-of-pattern-reverence-of-dust
CULT BURIAL:
https://www.cultburial.com
https://www.facebook.com/cultburial
https://www.instagram.com/cult_burial