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Photo Credit:
James Bousema
August 23, 2023| RELEASE REVIEW

Celestial Sanctuary – Insatiable Thirst For Torment | Album Review

The figureheads of the New Wave Of British Death Metal look to cement their place on the world stage with their sophomore album, An Insatiable Thirst For Torment.

There’s a new life in death metal these days that hasn’t been seen for a good while. Not only are boundaries being pushed in terms of technicality and brutality, on a fan level it’s seemingly more popular than ever. Credit bands like Undeath, 200 Stab Wounds and Sanguisugabogg for bringing a youthful, almost (Whisper it, lest you get a battle jacket shoved down your throat) hardcore kid perspective on things to the mix.

However, those are all American bands…and we Brit’s can’t be left out in the cold, can we? In step Celestial Sanctuary, guitars and severed head in hand, to stake their claim to the best modern death metal band throne…and they make a bloody good go of it!

First off. Let’s talk about that artwork, which was created by James Bousema (Responsible for the similarly epic Glacial Domination artwork for Frozen Soul), because it is an absolute masterpiece. It’s a mix of Doom (The video games, not the genre), sheer Lovecraftian scale and Kaiju influence on the design is impeccable. Whether or not you end up liking the record (Spoilers, you will), you’ll at least be able to appreciate the majesty of the art work and hope the band make some delightful prints of it.

Now, the onto the music. The band themselves formed merely four years ago in 2019, releasing their full debut, Soul Diminished in 2021. A very well received record, it showed that the band were not only well versed in their death metal lore and history, but weren’t afraid to let more modern influences shine through. Now, to some death metal purists, that may be sacrilege, but they’re the kind of fan who just want every band to sound like Eaten Back to Life even in 2023. By throwing in hefty grooves, bowel-bursting breakdowns (Though not in a Deathcore way) and a tremendous ability to write actual songs, they showed that they’re not only a product of their influences. Tours with bands like Undeath, Frozen Soul and Obituary not only solidified their credibility, but clearly gave them the impetus to take their sound to the next level in a haze of slasher movies and weed smoke.

By throwing in hefty grooves, bowel-bursting breakdowns (Though not in a Deathcore way) and a tremendous ability to write actual songs, they showed that they're not only a product of their influences

The result is Insatiable Thirst For Torment. Eight songs of disgusting, filthy riffs, insidious bass lines and vocals flecked with spit and vomit…and it’s absolutely glorious. As the lumbering guitar of ‘Trapped Within The Rank Membrane’ lurches into your ears like a rotting, stinking corpse from a peat bog and descends into what can only be described as a death metal knee slapper, you begin to realise that this is the good shit. Vocalist Thomas J Cronin manages to channel the past while having a slight hardcore edge to his voice, giving it an even more menacing lilt. Not so much “I’m going to gut you” as it is “I’ll beat you to death with my bare hands and eat your eyes”. Can you understand what he’s saying half the time? No, but would you really want to?

Frankly, every single member of the band deserves a shout out here. Each instrument is played in such a way that it makes you feel a little uneasy. The bass from Jay Rutterford rattles like viscera-dripping-bones on a chopping board, the drums are given a frankly massive, nasty production that makes you look over your shoulder every so often as you bang your head and the guitar! Vocalist Thomas and Matt Adnett shred like it’s 80’s Florida. Add in the skin-peeling mix and you’re left with a record that sounds like it was recorded simultaneously in 1987 and 2023. It’s also worth pointing out that the band produced and mixed the record themselves, which deserves a large amount of kudos.

Determined to host a “Best Song Title Of the Year” contest with themselves as the only entrant, ‘Glutted with Chunder’ is as wretch inducing as the name suggests, with its buzzsaw guitars and almost howled vocals. ‘Swivel Eyed and Gurning In The Shadows’ opens with a neck snapping array of blast beats that will surely see legions of fans going full Corpsegrinder across the world, before descending into a contender for one of the best extreme metal songs of recent times. It stomps, it staggers, it frantically claws at your face until you succumb to it’s savage beauty.

Frankly, every single member of the band deserves a shout out here. Each instrument is played in such a way that it makes you feel a little uneasy.

As mentioned, there is groove on this album, an absolute mountain of it. ‘Meandering Stream of Foul Fluid’ (Another song title your mum wouldn’t approve of) sways with heft luring you in before the track unleashes proper. ‘Unquenchable Thirst’ has smatterings of thrash and hardcore amongst the menace, and you can see there’ll be some fists and kicks flying when this gets played live. ‘Biomineralization (Cell Death)’ offers gargantuan stomping and all the atmosphere of being tied up in a dungeon waiting to be experimented on by a masked captor.

‘Gutted with A Blunt Blade’ is a frantic closer that feels like a lover letter to the genre. Eviscerating blast beats and squealing guitars maul your ears before a solo so blistering that your own fingers might start to bleed. And then it’s over. Only eight songs, but enough to make you feel almost grimey, like there’s a thin film on your skin, that just won’t come off. But in a good way. You’ll probably end up going again too, because this is a monumental piece of music that puts the band right up there next to their previously mentioned peers. Make sure to catch these guys live wherever you can because this is death metal lightning in a bottle, sending a clear message to the world that Britain won’t be left in the background.

Score: 9/10


Celestial Sanctuary