85%
Sijjeel—Salvation within Insanity (2022)
Details
Mixed and Mastered by GLDCHN Studios. Artwork by Rudi ‘Gorgingsuicide’ Yanto. Released by Comatose Music on Friday 3 June 2022.
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Band
- Floor Van Kuijk—Vocals
- Lukas Kaminski—Bass
- Hussain Akbar—Guitars and drum programming
Tracks
- Isolation behind unrealism
- Inverted contentment in salvation
- The affliction of deteriorating minds
- Mental paralysis
- Climbing into the abyss
- Departing from human nature
- Indignation overcame me
- Inflection to thee smut
Review
Saudia Arabia isn’t the first country you might consider when you think of brutal death metal, but from the opening few seconds of this album it is clear that Sijjeel mean business.
Hatched in the desert sands of Saudi Arabia nearly a decade ago, the eyes of Sijjeel soon turned to Europe to find the warped souls that could complete the three-headed beast. Floor Van Kuijk (Carnifloor, Focal Dystonia, Korpse etc) and Lukas Kaminski (Stillbirth, Placenta Powerfist etc) were chosen to join with Hussain Akbar and bring forth disease, destruction and death. Following on from the dire warnings of the 2020 EP Cyclopean Megaliths, Sijjeel are now ready to unleash the hell of Salvation Within Insanity—a crushing assault laced with an arcane poison, a force of bone-breaking intensity wrapped in a cloak of nightmares.
Promo material
This is a powerful, brutal, gurgling beast of an album that is focused on delivering heavy music as quickly as it can into your head even if it has to drill a hole through your skull to put it there. Every note, every beat, every growl feels heavy and placed with intention and precision.
One song bleeds into the next. A pummelling onslaught of pounding riff and incomprehensible, gurgled vocals. The production balances the perfect mix of bass and treble that delivers a clear punch even at loud volumes… which is clearly how this album needs to be listened to.
It is hard to highlight a single track in this unrelenting wall of noise. This feels like the audible equivalent of being run over by a tank regiment. The terrifying battering and pounding of the earth, the relentless rumble of bass and drums, the gory vocals. Once the album ends, the silence comes as a merciful blessing.
If I have any criticism about this release, with this intensity of brutality, short and sharp is probably best. At 34 minutes, this oddly feels like a long album. By the time the penultimate track “Indignation overcame me” (track 7) ended I felt a little indignant myself that the longest track on the record was still to come. If anything, at this point, a short intermission would have been welcome. A palate cleanser—something atmospheric, delicate, anything that is the complete opposite from the storm that has been raging until now. And then explode with the finalé. Or simply fade to black.
Conclusion
For some bands, to say that all their songs sound the same and could easily be played in any random order without the listener noticing would be a bad thing. Somehow, Sijjeel have turned this into their strength. As the promo material explains, “From the morbid purgatory that lies between the edge of sanity and the shores of madness comes the furious, brutal death metal of Sijjeel.”
And this furious, brutal monster is good.
Review score: 85%