Soul Diminished

Sometimes the quietly modest will win the day over those with vaulting but wholly unrealisable ambitions. The debut LP from the Cambridgeshire quartet known as Celestial Sanctuary can easily be thrown in with the new wave of old school death metal(?) whose grip on the metal community doesn’t seem to be loosening any time soon. All the trimmings are present on ‘Soul Diminished’; the rich, earthy guitar tone that exists just to spite the digital precision of early millennial metal, the vocals which – despite being fairly high pitched – are covered in cavernous reverb, the crisp and clear drums with a warm organic sheen kept at bay for the sake of performative integrity.

So far, so on-trend. But there’s a sense in which Celestial Sanctuary – in doctoring their surface level aesthetic to sound exactly like every other OSDM fan-band on the scene right now – made some deceptively good choices along the way. The reach of this album may be modest, but the resulting work is a tight, focused, and altogether unified piece of artistry. This automatically makes ‘Soul Diminished’ a more satisfying listen than more overly ambitious artistry that ultimately falls short of its lofty goals. We are free to sit back and follow the underlying strings connecting each riff together, as each constituent part unfolds in a manner that is both playful and aggressive in equal measure.

All the usual voices can be heard in the Celestial Sancutary blend: Incantation, Autopsy, even some hints of Suffocation style slamming here and there. But they are worked into a cohesive unit on each track thanks in part to the strong character of the production, but also the regular reiteration of themes that can be felt and understood through several developments of tempo and playing technique. It’s not the most exciting thing to listen to for a seasoned death metal fan, but it’s always worth noting when a release in the OSDM style crops up that has a degree of focus and clarity of purpose behind each track that allows it to hang together based on its own internal logic as opposed to an obstructive hodgepodge.

One final thing to note that completely passed me by on first listen is how stingy Celestial Sanctuary are with solos. I say “stingy” like they owe me some fretboard murder. The observation is more to further emphasise how much this band can do with less. You honestly do not notice their absence until some screeching guitar leads jump out on the track ‘Suffer Your Sentience’, but even then it’s only for a couple of bars. This is another indication of the less-is-more philosophy at work here. ‘Suffer Your Sentience’ is a slow, Asphyxian marching number, the guitar leads are used to elevate the intensity for a brief moment over what is a fairly rudimentary but deliberate collection of death/doom riffs, but nothing is overdone either way. And that seems to be the underlying philosophy at play on this work as a whole, an efficient, hardworking album with few bells and whistles but reliable results all the same.

Originally published at Hate Meditations