On their 16th (!) album, Krallice show no signs of slowing down, wrapping their signature experimental black metal around the listener like a hungry boa constrictor and refusing to let go.
Release date: September 18, 2026 | Profound Lore Records | Instagram | Facebook | Bandcamp
It’s hard not to love Krallice‘s output over the years. Since 2008, the New York quartet have come into their own, playing an experimental style of extreme metal owing as much to luminaries like Gorguts (who, coincidentally, invited guitarist/producer Colin Marston to join their reunion lineup the following year) as to traditional, chilly black metal artists like Ulver. The rawness, the intensity, the technicality have always been core tenets of Krallice‘s sound and over the last 18 years and 15 albums, there has been no shortage of interesting (even groundbreaking) avant-garde ideas explored through their music – unsurprising given Marston’s myriad of other exploratory projects like Dysrhythmia, Behold…the Arctopus, and the demented Infidel?/Castro!. For their 16th LP, Scour Order, the group reminds longtime fans like myself why we gravitated toward them in the first place: we’ve stared into the void, it’s stared back, and now we’re happily married to it.
Krallice have developed the rare gift of writing dense, lengthy songs that still feel trim, every note purposeful and sharpening the atmosphere. “Agonal Shining” pulls open the curtain by living up to its title: piercing guitar harmonies, growling bass, and tribal drumming give way to tremolo speedrunning and blastbeats in a way that feels both harrowing and exultant. Any of the blackgaze bands that followed in the years Krallice‘s debut would give their eyeteeth for such good writing and dynamics. The pained shouting and off-kilter time signatures changes follow suit, with the former dropping out altogether for long stretches and the latter resulting in some extraordinary instrumental passages starting around the five-minute mark. The closing guitar solo stops the song cold in a jaw-dropping finale. It’s just too damned good.
In most other cases, 63 minutes of ‘avant-garde prog black metal’ would be a lot to ask for someone to get through in one sitting. Krallice make every second count: the jazz-on-steroids snare drum pattern introduced two minutes into “Grievous Corrector” is seat-edge material from drummer Lev Weinstein, and feels essentially tied to that section of the song’s more ambient guitar work. “Kill the Guardian” has beastly vocals and a rolling structure that transitions from section to section so seamlessly, you don’t even notice how strong and memorable each new riff is before the next one shows up:
‘Siphon useless antiphona
Concealed remnant, obfuse cost
Derail essential seepage
Eroded self, soulless blaspheme.‘
The doomy ending of “Unceasing Path” flattens the ground around it with every lurch, and “Living Useless Ritual” goes full Portal around the mid-point with grinding, low guitars and demonic vocalizations. “Indecipherable Divinities” has swelling sci-fi synths in its last leg that, somehow, actively add to the chaos instead of cheapening it – a testament to Marston’s additional acumen as producer. The rising guitar lines in “Her Green Arms” make one’s hair stand on end, like Agalloch after a night of drinking Red Bull while listening to Glenn Branca.
The 13-minute long title track culminates Scour Order‘s audial abstractions: distant drums hammer away in the background while the guitars and bass provide the cloudy overcast. For three minutes the group construct this blurry image, and when the production finally comes into focus and the guttural bellowing ensues, the experience is completely engrossing. The wailing leads that appear two-thirds of the way through are passionately beautiful, setting up the final rush that brings it over the finish line in a flurry of shapeshifting straight-time blastbeating and triplet-feel switch-ups. It brings the curtain down on one of the most impressive albums I’ve heard this year, and certainly in the top 3 of metal releases. Krallice had me with high hopes for this album and they exceeded what I could’ve imagined. It’s a bar that very few groups of their longevity and influence can maintain for nearly 20 years running, and in the extreme avant-garde, there are none that sound quite like this.
