Band:	Black Curse
Album:	Burning In Celestial Poison
Style:	Death metal
Release date:	October 25, 2024
A review by:	RaduP

01. Spleen Girt With Serpent
02. Trodden Flesh
03. Ruinous Paths...
04. ...To Babylon
05. Flowers Of Gethsemane

Do you ever feel like 80s extreme metal just wasn't extreme enough?

In the grand scheme of metal's history, some influential big names like Venom, Slayer, Death, Morbid Angel, or Napalm Death get their due and their praises sung to high heaven. The more you dig into it, more and more and more layers of cultish bands for people in the know you get. If Cavalera returning to the grimiest of the Sepultura albums is any indication, is that there's still some lingering interest in the mix of sounds that made extreme metal at the time, back when the lines between thrash, death, and black metal weren't properly traced. I praised Black Curse's debut Endless Wound for aesthetically and sonically harkening back to that point in time. Burning In Celestial Poison picks certain aspects of it to dive further in.

First off, when I first introduced the band I had to mention the pseudo-supergroup nature of it, as well as arguing that it's not entirely accurate. Even though Endless Wound made such a splash that I hope it's not necessary to reintroduce the band, I feel like it's still worth mentioning that the band has lineup connections to Khemmis, Primitive Man, and Spectral Voice; though Blood Incantation's Morris Kolontyrsky has since been replaced by Steve Peacock of Spirit Possession and Ulthar fame. Though not all of these bands are in this exact same vein, it's still a very reputable pool of cult bands that have pushed metal's envelope the past decade.

Aside from the lineup change, what feels different for Burning In Celestial Poison is that it seemingly favors the black metal side of the sound over the death metal one this time around, even if the genre lines are still as blurred, but the names that come to mind when listening to it, from Poison to Sarcófago to Sabbat are also ones that walk the line but ultimately end up more on the black side. The demo cassette-like aesthetic of the cover art also feels closer to black metal, but it's the longer song structures, as the album is basically four ten minute long songs, each longer than anything on Endless Wound, and that's a trick I've seen before, and one that works by fitting death-metal sounding riffs in black metal sounding structures, all with a level of chaotic aggression befitting of war metal.

With its insistence on more gargantuan song structures, one would expect some more breathing room, but even though there is a sense of ebb and flow present all throughout, it does feel like the throttle is pushed most of the time. It's quite a challenging listen in that regard, for all its chaos and its quite indecipherable shrieking and its dense and almost feverish sound, but one that works to create a visceral yet cohesive colossus of a sound. The performance, especially from the vocalist, is absolutely manic. The production would feel too dense for its own good if it was one less step removed from sheer cacophony, but it works precisely where it is placed.

I'm still not quite sure where to place it against Endless Wound. Burning In Celestial Poison feels less direct and instantly likeable, though it doesn't derive the sound too much, and the aspects that it emphasizes work to create something quite transformative of the predecessor's sound.