Krallice return with their fifteenth album, a record that finds them going back to their original roles instead of pushing further into the explorations of recent years. «Scour Order» comes out on September 18 through Profound Lore Records.
Country: USA
Genre: Avant-Garde / Progressive Black Metal
For fans of: Weakling, Wolves in the Throne Room, Deathspell Omega, Behold the Arctopus
Eight tracks, with «Kill the Guardian» and «Living Useless Ritual» having come first as samples. Behind the band are musicians known from Behold the Arctopus and Orthrelm, who started in 2007 as a duo with the aim of playing black metal, became a trio for a private instrumental demo and ended up a quartet on their first LP.
Our take
Their story is not simple: from the first releases that were heard alongside the atmospheric post-black of Wolves in the Throne Room and the deviations of Weakling, to «Years Past Matter» in 2012 that closed their linear phase. Then came the role changes within the band, the analog synths and a run of seven albums in four years that does not fit into one sentence. «Crystalline Exhaustion» (2023) and «Inorganic Rites» (2024) were the most extreme points of that journey.
«Scour Order» feels like a return to their first nature, without throwing away everything they learned. The polyphony is dense and the landscape has fewer synthesizers and more guitar than their recent work — something that will relieve those who lost the band somewhere in the middle of the decade. It is not an easy record, nor does it try to be. The compositions demand patience and returns, and they reward those who make them.
For those who have followed the band from the early years, «Scour Order» works as a recognition: the technical mastery remains there, the atmosphere has tightened again, and the result is an album that puts you inside a world and lets you find the way back on your own.
See also: Stormkeep – «The Nocturnes Of Iswylm» | Escumergamënt – Apparebat Eidolon Senex.
