Available on both CD, and LP in a heavyweight case-wrapped sleeve with an insert and foldout poster, both editions featuring Marko Marov's striking, surreal artwork.

      After digging that Bestial Raids album that was recently repressed by the folks at Nuclear War Now, I went looking for more stuff from the Polish band and its various members, leading me to another release that had come out around the same time on the label, the debut full length from Doombringer. Also featuring members of Cultes Des Ghoules, Doombringer deliver a tumultuous blend of black and death metal enshrouded in a dank, humid atmosphere, evoking a filthy, subterranean vibe that at times references the sound of bands like Varathon, Necromantia, and particularly Mortuary Drape. While Doombringer's sound might not be as immediately quirky as the likes of Mortuary Drape, they succeed in creating an intense and unusual blast of sepulchral black/death that's loaded with crushing, doom-laden riffs and hellish atmosphere, and these seven tracks are marked by an offbeat vocal performance that blends together gruesome guttural roars and a nasty ophidian rasp with some rather deranged chant-like singing and even some distant, almost deathrock-style moans that all blend together to give Sabbath it's strange, infernal character.

      But even without that weirdly varied and utterly malevolent vocal performance, these songs stand out. Riffs erupt into buzzing tremolo swarms and are sharpened into spiky chord progressions, the music sometimes shifting into brief passages of grim, lumbering doom laced with Iommi-esque trills; when they move between that dank black metal frenzy and the slower, skull-crushing dirges on songs like "Ominous Alliance", the shift is sudden and violent. A lot of these songs feature creative, unpredictable arrangements, and are often delivered with interesting, sometimes tricky counter-rhythms and percussive complexity that certainly adds to Doombringer's unique vibe. Underneath all of the satanic visions that are etched in semen and blood across The Grand Sabbath and the band's crushing, cavernous sound, there's something much more interesting going on here than your typical black/death assault. Recommended.