There is something deeply honest about taking decay, decomposition and the eternal cycle of life-toward-death as your central theme — and doing it with a poetic disposition instead of the typical death metal aesthetic of the “disturbed kid killing pets”. REEKING AURA from New York/New Jersey have built a world around that exact idea, and their second full-length album, ‘On The Promise Of The Moon’, is its most mature and coherent expression to date.
A bit of history: Reeking Aura were born in 2019 as a sextet — a meeting of musicians with experience in Afterbirth, Unearthly Trance, Grey Skies Fallen and others — and their first EP (‘Beneath The Canopy Of Compost’, 2020) moved along doomy, mid-paced ‘old school’ Death Metal paths. The debut LP ‘Blood And Bonemeal’ (2022) was a leap forward — brutal but melodic, multi-layered, hard to read at first, interesting by the end. An album that showed a mechanism in motion without yet having found its final direction.
For ‘On The Promise Of The Moon’ the band has changed its rhythm section (musicians from Trog), has moved to a quintet after the departure of composer/guitarist Ryan Lipynsky, and has entered the studio with a clear goal: to unite the competing elements of its sound into something more coherent. Mission accomplished.
The album works like a mélange — melodic death metal as the main axis, brutal death as the pulsing force beneath the surface, prog-death as the restless thought that refuses to settle. There are moments that recall ‘Spectral Sorrows’ by Edge of Sanity, others that reference Intestine Baalism or even the sole LP by Amorbital — that is, this American response to the Scandinavian melodic death explosive decade of the ’90s, before it became mass. Singer William Smith contributes with a vocal range that in itself works like a fifth instrument — guttural but with character.
The opener “Concrete Basin Bath” opens slowly, evolving into three and a half minutes that build a world. “Gorged Beyond Grudges” pulls you in with post-metallic drift and atmospheric moments that capture the ear. “Manure Like Magma” — yes, the title is exactly what you imagine — explodes into melodic fury that is the most impressive thing they have written. And “What Only Worms Witness” is where everything clicks, where you understand what separates this album from the previous one.
The closer/title track “On The Promise Of The Moon” closes with melodic runs that touch Sins of Omission — a finale worthy of the title’s promise.
It’s worth noting that the mix/master has been handled by Dan Swanö, and this choice isn’t random — the man knows exactly how to make this kind of sound breathe and hit right, turning the record’s ~32 minutes into something much denser and more impassioned than its duration implies.
And as for the cover — an abstract watercolor painting by Ion Carchelan — it balances masterfully between the grim and the poetic, sending the message that this isn’t about typical death metal aesthetics but something more thoughtful.
‘On The Promise Of The Moon’ isn’t perfect — the absence of the original doomy swagger is felt here and there, and half an hour may seem little. But that very compact format allows the album to breathe better on repeated listens — each time it reveals something new. For a band that is still taking shape, that’s a very good sign.
