CEREMONY OF SILENCE – Halios

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7.0

• Band:
  CEREMONY OF SILENCE
• Duration: 00:35:29
• Available from: 07/19/2024
• Label:

• Willowtip Records

After a solid debut album in 2019, the Slovakian duo Ceremony Of Silence had disappeared among the numerous releases of Willowtip Records, which is still the label that is publishing their second work entitled “Hálios”.
Five years of waiting between the two albums, however, does not seem to have dented the mathematical alchemy created by the duo Ďurčík/Pilarčík, to which today is added the vocal contribution of N. who completes the band's lineup. The sound texture that has been created is also this time extremely changeable and complex, perpetually balanced between disorienting dissonances and a tortuous melodic research that is always present, almost predominant.
In concrete terms, “Primaeval Sacrifice” forcefully displays the most aggressive concept that the trio knows how to give to their work, enchanting first for the technical quality put on stage and then thanks to the whirlwind guitar exchanges between riffs and arpeggiated playing, flowing into the subsequent “Serpent Slayer” with an even more rigorous approach.
In a spirit still rooted in the death metal tradition, Ceremony Of Silence maintain their omnipresent interest in pounding guitars and drums, but stuff them with fleeting atmospheric breaks that blend inextricably into a single stylistic alloy: this is demonstrated even better by “Moon Vessel”, where time slows down and the composition's meshes begin to widen towards deeper contaminations.
The brief interlude of “Eternal Return” reaches a climax of expectation that introduces the second part of the album, gradually focused on more personal rhythmic and melodic solutions. “Light Runs Through Light” contains some of the most suffocating and severe atmospheres of the lot, rising even higher for the quality of the musical finds, leaving to “Perennial Incantation” some harmonic contortions that instead show a more human and 'improvised' side in the music of our guys. The journey ends with “King In The Mountain”, a long epitaph that condenses the feats of the Slovaks in some particularly daring solutions that conclude the path of experimentation undertaken at the beginning.
As personal as the result may be, the initial intent of Ceremony Of Silence is very reminiscent of the artistic 'philosophy' undertaken by Ulcerate for a long time now, who with their monumental “Cutting The Throat Of God” risk overshadowing derivative works like this one, released shortly after: however, beyond the heavy shadow of the New Zealanders, “Hálios” represents a release of superfine quality (thanks to the musicians but also to the expert hand of Colin Marston in the mastering stage), where the power of extreme metal and the sneaky aura of the most dangerous ambient coexist according to a dynamic and explosive symbiosis, never willing to give way to simplicity or the obvious.