Life comes at you fast. Since releasing the details of latest album The Dark Parade (Metal Blade Records) to the world just a few weeks ago, Californian legends Cirith Ungol have already had to make two other major announcements regarding their future. First came the news at the end of September that long serving guitarist Jimmy Barraza was having to leave due to ongoing health issues, and then just a few days ago, the band shared the sad news that they were to be retiring from performing live shows as of next year.
The last few years has certainly been tough for Cirith Ungol. Since reforming in 2016 the band ended up releasing comeback album Forever Black (Metal Blade) right in the middle of the Covid-19 lockdown and unable to tour. To keep spirits up and momentum high, work began on the follow-up right away despite a catalogue of illnesses and personal losses, isolation and depression. However, some of the best art is created from the bleakest of situations and if your preferred medium is aggressive, epic doom metal then victory is almost certainly assured.
A semi-conceptual piece, the band’s typically doom-laden sixth record is an angry dive into despair and horror, the band looking more towards stories like H.P. Lovecraft‘s The Horror at Red Hook rather than the sword and sorcery epics for which they were originally known. Opening with the appropriately titled “Velocity (S.E.P.)”, the album kicks off with a surging rush of old school riffs and some top quality cheese grater vocals from Tim Baker, the singer giving his best King Diamond impression, before Barraza and co-guitarist Greg Lindstrom imbue the slow crawl of “Relentless” with Mercyful Fate-style Middle Eastern and Egyptian scales.
Eight minute epic “Sailor on the Seas of Fate” is a slow burning behemoth with a driving, uptempo middle section before the first half of the record ends with Baker and drummer Rob Garven stamping their authority all over the lurching menace of “Sacrifice”. Opening with the sound of a shattering mirror, the first of four interconnected tracks, “Looking Glass” is more Lovecraft than Lewis Carroll and contains no shortage of powerhouse chugging and some sensational bluesy solo work.
The title-track follows straight after, a lumbering monster of nightmares and broken dreams which suddenly drops into fast paced Black Sabbath worship, the song thrust onwards from its midpoint by a distinctly familiar “Children of the Grave” style riff. The conceptual second half continues with the insistent and oppressive doom of “Distant Shadows”, bassist Jarvis Leatherby really coming into his own before the record concludes with the no happy endings of “Down Below”.
A victory for pessimism and apocalyptic fear over hope and happiness, The Dark Parade is as dark as it gets with only a few brief moments of sunlight shining onto a world sat on the edge of destruction. Whether or not this signals the end of the band completely, only time will tell, but for now just be grateful this record exists and prepare to lose yourself in a labyrinth of existential terror and doom.
Buy the album here:
https://www.metalblade.com/cirithungol/
7 / 10
GARY ALCOCK