Veilburner strike while the iron is hot on their eighth LP, and leave no earth un-scorched.
Release date: November 14, 2025 | Transcending Obscurity Records | Bandcamp | Instagram
I don’t know about you, but I like my black metal weird. Hearing tremolo-picked, minor-scale riffs on repeat can be cool, but what if those riffs were undulating and esoteric? What if the vocals, instead of describing the devil, evoked the eldritch cosmic reaches? What if alien atmospheric effects suffused the music like the miasma of madness suffuses our own minds and bodies? For me, when black metal pushes its extremity towards the dissonance lodged in the universe’s very bosom, I hit play faster than you can say ‘Oranssi Pazuzu’.
In all seriousness, this is a great time to like strange black and blackened death metal. There are many stars at large: Imperial Triumphant, Blut Aus Nord, the aforementioned Oranssi Pazuzu, Ulthar, and more each excel in their own ways. Seldom, however, do I hear Veilburner mentioned in the same breath. That’s too bad. For more than a decade, this enigmatic duo of Pennsylvanians Mephisto Deleterio and Chrisom Infernium (whose stage names I will preserve) have crafted quality black metal of a most peculiar variety. Last year, I discovered them through their then-new album The Duality of Decapitation and Wisdom. It delighted me with its sheer commitment to extremity and obscurity, innovative songwriting, and barrage of pummeling riffs. My expectations were high for their quick follow-up, Longing for Triumph, Reeking of Tragedy.
Right from the start, the duo announce their malicious intent. “Longing for Triumph…” opens like a demonic military parade, complete with marching snare, echoing chants, and lead guitar like arcane artillery. Then it’s straight into a crop-burning, earth-salting riff-fest of blackened death metal. Mephisto Deleterio performs all instruments as usual, and he focuses on accentuating each unrelenting hit of the guitars. He conserves each riff’s headbanging force even through their twists and turns in odd time signatures. Chrisom Infernium’s vocals, meanwhile, cover a wide range of repugnant sounds to give this song its voice. Though lyrics are unavailable, the intent of the message is clear. This is a declaration of war.
The rest of the album carries on much in the same fashion. High-intensity riffs churn in vexing patterns, Chrisom Infernium preaches in delirious growls and shrieks, strange guitar leads strain to the stars. As the tracks continue, it’s increasingly clear that Veilburner prefer their irons hot, and the prolonged assault threatens to overbear any unprepared listener. Still, there are moments where atmosphere takes priority, and the riffs slow down to let the bizarreness shine. “Rigor & Wraith” is five full minutes of instrumental where UFOs threaten to descend at any moment, thanks to strange, high-pitched electronic effects. Though it is repetitive, the low, hypnotic grooves of the guitars make the time fly.
A more striking foil to the riff-filled barrage is track number six, “Ouroboreal Whorl”. It begins in a seamless transition from the previous song. One element unites the two: an echoing ratcheting sound, like a lock in a cavernous vault clicking open. From this mantra emerge twisting, clean guitar arpeggios, equally reverb-soaked. The mystery builds, undulating, until the distortion kicks in and it is plodding, doomy, groovy, but no less atmospheric. Veilburner keep the groove going and building steadily for five more minutes, embellishing, changing drum patterns, and ripping a guitar solo, but never switching groove. For me, it speaks to their evolution as a band that they’re able to have “Ouroboreal Whorl” flourish in such a continuous crescendo throughout the piece, a trick usually reserved for post-metal veterans.
The final song, “…Reeking of Tragedy”, arguably encapsulates the entire ethos of this album. Musically, it combines hypnotic atmosphere with punishing guitar work, putting all the strengths of the previous tracks in complex conversation. Mephisto Deleterio’s resulting composition is wandering yet never lost, an interesting way to finish things off. It also gives much-needed clarity to the cryptic themes of the album. It begins with a sample too long to be ignored, an excerpt from Vincent Price’s famous monologue from Madhouse (1974), where he describes the ‘phantom’ in us ‘exulting in death’. Later, Christom Infernium offers the only vocals intelligible enough for me to transcribe: ‘Do not summon what you cannot possess’. It seems the spectre of death has been roused, and cannot be contained. And just as “…Reeking of Tragedy” bookends the album along with “Longing for Triumph”, it includes the same chanting we heard in that first song. One must ask, where has the militant call for victory in that chant brought us? To destruction, unwished for but inevitable, clinging to us like the stench of death.
