Inter Arma - Sulphur English

So underground metalheads all over Twitter have been practically raving about this album since even before it was released, which actually made me uneasy going into it (even though I quite like Inter Arma) because “metal Twitter” and I have not really seen eye to eye on what this year’s great releases are supposed to be so far, which is fine. Most notable were Vanum’s and Totaled’s releases this year, for which I had seen nothing but excitement and adoration surrounding them, only to not see for myself what all the hype was about. This time though, we’re finally on the same page, they and I, and thank God because Sulphur English was my first physical pre-order of the year and I was really hoping my faith in Inter Arma wouldn’t stab me in the back quite like my faith in Opeth did when I pre-ordered Sorceress. Unlike the famed Swedish progressive death metal icons and their unprecedented foray into 70’s prog, Inter Arma seem to only get denser and more grandiose with each release, and the ridiculously self-depreciating band (just online really) has come through with quite the grand follow-up to the already monolithic Paradise Gallows from 2016.

Sulphur English is hardly any major stylistic or compositional shift away from Sky Burial and Paradise Gallows, but it is a subtle, yet significant, refining of the band’s sound from those albums. As much as it is the central aspect of their sound, the band are not as heavily dependent upon the weight of their sludgy instrumentation as they have been (and most of their contemporaries generally are) on albums past, with the lighter accents, the black; death; and doom metal elements, and other stylistic additions doing more than ever before to enhance the heaviness and well-roundedness of their sound. With the album’s bass end still as solid and foundational as ever, but not being relied on so ubiquitously to carry as much of the atmosphere, the band’s creativity beyond thick walls of guitar sound and death growls rises to the demanding responsibility to bring out the most full-bodied sludge the band has ever shown themselves to be capable of. Granted the band have never shied away from acoustic sections, pianos, or post-metal ambiance, but the way the lighter elements are integrated to enhance the already meticulously mixed sludge makes Sulphur English quite the important solidification of the long-term viability of their style, showing that Inter Arma are not a one-trick pony.

The album opens strong with the ominous high-pitched hum of “Bumgardner” that explodes into a crash-accented downpour of thick guitar sludge and leads smoothly into the continued post-metallic death sludge pounding of “A Waxen Sea”, on which Inter Arma’s signature wall of sound sets the tone for the rest of the album. The initially dirge-y drumming escalates from meager blast beating to busy dynamic filling and leads the way for the song to climb to higher heights of intensity for its finishing moments.

The album’s middle, though, features probably my favorite sequence of tracks. The battle-starting crash of a huge gong ushers in the tom-drum-led sludge showers of “Howling Lands” whose black metal snarls provide an extra, primal, ritualistic moment for the album. The final section of energetic tom beating fades seamlessly into the carvernous clean singing on the central hymn, “Stillness”, which provides a few (nine) minutes of needed rest without at all dismantling the heavy atmosphere the album had built around the song (eventually contributing thick post-metal instrumentation in its final minutes). Rather, it provides the album a somewhat unexpected highlight through some welcome diversity. I love the way the band just build the meditative ambiance and wait patiently and perfect to burst forth from it in fuller force. The swelling cymbals and guitar-feedback of following piano interlude, “Observances of the Path”, lead smoothly into “The Atavist’s Meridian”, whose immediately aggressive drumming, filthitly sinister low-register riffing, and frighteningly focused and sardonic echoed black metal growls open the song to a flood of deathly, merciless sludge of the highest order.

Even the songs I didn’t bring up in great detail carry the album so smoothly and at the very least act as firm pillars holding up the weight of the massively crushing atmosphere the band conjure. The andante sludge burner “Citadel” is as stone-solid and towering of a piece as its title suggests, and even though it’s not as spiritually invoking as “Stillness”, I love the haunting echoed cries of the uneasy doom burn of “Blood on the Lupines”. The song “Sulphur English” closes quite exuberantly the album that derives its title from said song in an epic, sprawling rapture of indulgently dense, coarse sludge and brutally pessimistic blackened death dissonance.

Overall, it might seem like everything above is just a describing a variety of fancy roundabout routes to heavy-as-fuck sludge, and in a way, that’s not inaccurate. Inter Arma have shown they can handle this style at its most basic, but it’s the way they’ve expanded their sound since The Cavern with each album, and have continued to do so with this one, that have raised Inter Arma to such transcendent heights within their field and brought them deserved praise along the way. Their integration of various styles and outside elements to specialize their post-death-sludge has indeed only strengthened their signature sound. The band show that while simple, no-bells-and-whistles sludge can certainly get the job done, that constant variation of approach and integration of immersive atmospheric elements to provide and then shatter a sense of meditative space actually makes for a crash of sonic waves that hits harder than simply a constant, predictable stream of heaviness. And though not immediately noticeable, some good time spent immersed in and learning to appreciate getting battered by its volatile atmosphere will reveal that Sulphur English is a significant and deservedly applaudable step up from the band’s already renowned preceding works.

Thesauric tsunami of molten bricks/10