Review by Justin Joseph
Sarastus – Agony Eternal
Record Label: Dominance of Darkness Records
Year: 2025
Rating: 9/10
A soul often wanders this realm in search of something earnest, an experience wherein a hunger is satiated. We may gaze upon certain works, admire the features that adorn them, but the belly still remains sick and hollow, never to feel satisfied. Then there are those few pieces that bewitches the consciousness and transform the mind, where the emotions copulate with the essences imbued within the art to create a world for the soul to explore.
“Agony External” by Sarastus takes the soil of Finnish Black Metal, and like titans such as Behexen and Impaled Nazerene that came before them, infuses this seed with their esoteric energy to form a goetic psalm carved in sound wherein the mind reads upon, and every emotion that is not touched by light festers and swells with the acrid stench of malice.
Sarastus
The manner in which the musical elements coalesce into each other forms a jagged architecture, for this should naught be looked at as a negative; rather, the crude way in which the fusion occurs is what bestows upon this structure the very magick that is exhaled in its candor. “Towards Eternity” and “Where Cruelty Never Ends” are morsels that display the very wrath-like spirit that haunts this offering, for the tongue that carves these litanies in sulphur breathes forth the very life of animation into this album.
The very flame that dances upon a funeral pyre as it licks the flesh and vomits forth the blackened smoke, the very shape it assumes, so too do the vocals exude. For the various ways in which this tenebrous spirit bends, splinters and reforms can be attributed to the voice which echoes a similar cadence to such Finnish counterparts such as Sargeist and Horna. However, if the vocals speak forth the incantations, the instrumental elements, on the other hand, reveal themselves as the causality of such a spell. “From Pride, To Shame, To Misery” is an attestation whereby the percussions and strings follow an orphic flow to magnify the dense atmosphere, for the very motion of the guitars feels live in its recording, coupled with the drums adding a rather palpable layer to these textures. In my opinion, they accentuate the album in making this unholy vestment more worn in, thereby elevating the listening experience.
The book of Exodus states, “And thou shalt take the anointing oil, and anoint the tabernacle, and all that is therein, and shalt hallow it, and all the vessels thereof: and it shall be holy.” In the same breath wherein the oil is used to consecrate a vessel that is holy, “Agony Eternal” can be looked upon as the very bile that is used to deconsecrate and desecrate a celestial body in the most vile manner, for the very dissonance in sound becomes the blade that cauterizes the loins that spurts the seed of piousness.