A couple disclaimers: I was lucky enough to hear this album in a slightly rougher form before mastering and provided very positive feedback to the person behind Sallow Moth, Garry Brents, back in February 2025. I was not paid for this nor was any other benefit conferred for my time and thoughts aside from an early copy, simply the joy of hearing a really, really good album before it was even formally announced. Additionally, when the album was formally announced, it was revealed to me through the Bandcamp page notes that our pal and fellow writer Nathan Kwon provides gang vocals along with many others on one song of the album. With all that in mind, the following review is absolutely as unbiased as any other is, just me making good on a desire to talk about great music and share it with y’all.
The second coming in a streak of weirdo metal that started with Hypomanic Daydream is here, this time in the form of exuberant progressive death metal from Sallow Moth, another longstanding project from the restless, ever-talented Garry Brents who’s not a stranger to us as I’ve reviewed his other project Memorrhage twice. It’s now sadly no more, but don’t fret – Brents is relentless with creativity and saw it fit to bring back Sallow Moth for another go and, while I’m not as familiar with this project’s history, I can and will confidently say it’s a great time to get hip to it as this is one of the most impressive metal albums I’ve heard this whole decade.
It’s a little more straitlaced than other metal I could called ‘weirdo’ when it comes to conventions, but its breadth of influences and decisions are beguiling. Threads from everything from Akercocke to Cynic can be found woven within the molded tapestry of Mossbane Lantern, a gurgling monolith of death metal goodness that shows there’s still plenty reason to check out newer acts in the genre even for the most jaded and apathetic with the genre.
Brents handles writing, lead vocals, guitars, bass, synths, and other assorted production elements. Like their other projects though, it’s a community affair – Ashbreather, Chipped Topaz, Dave Norman (Zegema Beach Records), Manic Dream Girl (Hypomanic Daydream), and more all make appearances in various capacities, largely vocally. Goes to show the amount of people who believed and fucked with the project, even if it was on a more conceptual level at the time, and now I too am a believer.
From the outset, there’s an arcane feeling to the power behind the music. It’s resolute in the way it approaches heaviness and melody; crushing, yes, but not in an overly domineering way. There’s plenty of agility in the riffs and drums that arm each song, and that’s without even getting into the cosmic asides like “Psionic Battery” which has a bona fide breakbeat section and harlequin ambience with tonal and tempo shifts all over. One of the only musical parallels I can think of personally is how Aseitas worked with similar change-ups on their last LP which was an unassailable banger of last year. Still, cohesion is never threatened no matter how wild it gets.
Sallow Moth is a metal project first and foremost though, and it shows. Between songs like “Gutscape Navigator” and “Aethercave Boots”, a wide spectrum of sound is employed. The former track bludgeons for an intro to Mossbane Lantern, brimming with ass-beating drums and tasty guitars are always intelligible and wily in the Carcass (all eras) kind of way. Sounds corny, but it was this very moment I knew this album was going to be something worth talking about and every subsequent song just does more and pushes further than the last one does. “Aethercave Boots” is where Sallow Moth doubles down on the celestial eccentricity that “Psionic Battery” only flirted with – after kneading us into the ground with mean, doomy plaster, it recedes into a progressive, almost jazzy landscape rife with clean, pristine synths and an upbeat tone for a solid two minutes. It just works.
And things continue on like this for four more tracks, just differently. No idea’s recycled, even the solidly metallic affairs are approached differently enough to remain worthy of a deep dive individually. “Parasite Orb’s Lock” is a more explicit balancing of the disparate elements Sallow Moth plays with clean vocals and yells layered on top of violent binges of music hammered into shape on the coolest anvil you can imagine. “Cauldron Brim Neurosilk” is a full-send dedication to melodic death metal (not so much the Gothenburg kind, though there are comparisons that could be made) with cascades of prog metal mayhem that’s are endearing as they are enlightening. “Runemilk Amulet” submits to spaciness with both its chillier and heavier sections making for a dense, atmospheric ending to Mossbane Lantern before the instrumental closer “Parasite Orb (Chipped Topaz)” takes over. As the name implies, it’s where guest Chipped Topaz comes in and all composition for the track – which is cinematic and more synth-laden in nature – is credited to that project. It feels well-earned; celebratory, yet still dark and uncertain with organs and melodic lines that pique curiosity. It feels like a ‘to be continued’ card hung at the end of the album, teasing a future that I certainly hope Sallow Moth has after this.
It reminds me of the first time I heard Wormed almost 20 years ago and how initially put off I was by them and their wild compositions and performances. Now that I have decades of experience in extreme metal’s murky, spherical waters, I can approach something like Mossbane Lantern without getting culture shock of course, but the giddiness remains along with the feeling that you’re listening to something capable of being the catalyst of great artistic change and raising the bar for how others do their own things. This will be someone’s PlanisphÆrium and I can only hope it reaches the right ears when it’s supposed to and not a moment too late… or early.
Mossbane Lantern is replete with tons of great ideas both based on other great ideas and others seemingly of Brents’ own devising. No matter what the source, it’s coherent in a way that’s really hard to pull off, weird without alienating fans of progressive and death (and progressive death) metal, and massively impressive in terms of execution, writing, and performance. It feels like the kind of project Brents was always capable of putting out across his many projects, a creative watershed moment for himself to take great pride in and fans and peers to take note of. How does death metal, and perhaps just metal in general, move forward in the big 2025? With truly fun and progressive projects like this. Damn, it’s good.
