Band:	Citadel (USA)
Album:	Descension
Style:	Progressive death metal
Release date:	March 22, 2025
A review by:	musclassia

01. Veil
02. Sorrow Of The Thousandth Death
03. Crescent Dissentient
04. Under The Primrose
05. A Shadow In The Mist [feat. Hanna Levin]
06. Downwards Ever [feat. Amadeus Sanchez]
07. As One

2024 was not only the year that Opeth returned to some slight semblance of extremity to collective astonishment, but it also featured multiple records from new bands heavily indebted to Opeth’s glory years. There’s unlikely to be more new music from Opeth this year as well, but there’s still space for more Opeth worship.

In fairness, Citadel (USA)’s third album Descension is not nearly as derivative of Opeth as either Ubiquity or Piah Mater, incorporating enough influences from other members of the progressive death metal community, exhibiting features of tech-death on top of the grandeur of the likes of Disillusion and theatricality of bands similar to Native Construct or Vulture Industries. Nevertheless, this is still firmly a genre piece without all that much new that it’s bringing to the table, so you better be a fan of this style if you’re going to press play on Descension; for those who are fond of this sound, though, you’ll get a solid amount of enjoyment out of this album and its substantial contents.

Much like another album in the subgenre that I reviewed earlier this week, Descension doesn’t hold back on song length, with every track here reaching (and most of them substantially exceeding) 7 minutes. Opening track “Veil” starts the album off already in full unapologetically prog mode, with melodic arpeggiated motifs, grand extreme prog riffs and solos, numerous twists and turns, and multiple tangents into acoustic breaks with clean vocals. Later cut “A Shadow In The Mist” also centers around arpeggio motifs alongside ferocious extremity, and has a few very neat solos.

The production does have a degree of roughness to it that turns the most extreme sections quite murky, and the clean vocals themselves aren’t always convincing in their execution, but there’s sections featuring them in closing song “As One” that are rather effective, capturing that depth and conviction that Disillusion are capable of in such sections. If I were to note a greater weakness of Descension, it would probably be in some of the ways that the songs flow, and the effectiveness of the sections they flow into. “Sorrow Of The Thousandth Death” in particular goes quite awkwardly from its extreme sections into an acoustic break, while the acoustic solo against an extreme metal backdrop in “Downwards Ever” is unconvincing in its execution. Probably the weakest point of the album, however, is “Under The Primrose”; it can be a tall order for a metal band to convincingly pull off a long all-acoustic song, and although there’s some nice flute and piano moments in this soft prog cut, as a whole it lacks the necessary staying power to justify its runtime.

There are definite strengths to the album, however, even within songs with weaker moments. I rather enjoy the quasi-symphonic climax to “Sorrow Of The Thousandth Death” with the guest clean vocals from Hanna Levin, while “Downwards Ever” is nicely bookended by Opeth-meets-Gothenburg riffing early on, and muted orchestrations near its end. Probably the highlight songs for me, however, are “Crescent Dissentient” and “As One”. The former starts off in a tech-death/melodeath vibe early on reminiscent of Obscura, and features multiple strong solos, but it’s when it goes into a prolonged cleaner prog section in its second half that it reaches another level, the orchestrations lending this sequence a nicely theatrical feel not far from Vulture Industries. “As One”, in contrast, is joyful in is clash of rapid blasting aggression performed with an unexpectedly uplifting melodic tone, almost going in a meloblack/blackgaze direction.

This won’t be the best or most original extreme prog metal album of the year, but it does have some ideas of its own worth paying attention to, and it does have some solid songs that are easy to derive satisfaction from.