Vassafor / Sinistrous Diabolus - S/T

Written by Craig Hayes.


Vassafor and Sinistrous Diabolus make merciless and mind-crushing metal, from a uncompromising standpoint. The New Zealand-based bands are part of that increasingly rare breed of bloody-minded underground artists that put the integrity of their music before anything else. Technology might well have transformed the way bands promote their music, and revolutionised the way we access it, but you’re not going to find Vassafor or Sinistrous Diabolus waving a flag to get your attention.

You discover Vassafor and Sinistrous Diabolus; they don’t seek you out.

When you listen to either band, you’re listening to artists that are compelled to create, regardless of who is listening. That’s how it’s always been for Vassafor founder VK (aka Phil Kusabs) and Sinistrous Diabolus overlord N.K.S (aka Kris Stanley), and in recent years, both of their bands have released full-lengths that have shown an unwavering commitment to crafting meticulously arranged yet wholly murderous art.

The history of Sinistrous Diabolus is inextricably bound to the release of the band’s 1993 demo, Opus One. That cassette is the most influential death/doom recording released in New Zealand’s early extreme metal history, and you can find it on Sinistrous Diabolus’ Bandcamp page to download for free. However, on that very same page, you're also going to find the band’s first full-length release, 2013’s Total Doom//Desecration, and that album proves that Sinistrous Diabolus’ best work doesn’t reside in the dusty annals of extreme metal history.

Total Doom//Desecration, which I’ve reviewed here before here on Metal Bandcamp, was a monolithically heavy album. Spilling over with pulverising doom and churning death metal, the album channeled feedbacking noise through mangled melodies, resulting in a deeply unnerving and demoralising ambience. All of that is brought to bear on Sinistrous Diabolus’ 20-minute contribution to this split release, “Aeon Tenebris - Aeo Lacrimis”.

“Aeon Tenebris - Aeo Lacrimis” drags desolate soundscapes over godforsaken landscapes, and it's a hypnotic dirge, bringing torment and torture, monstrous guitars, and wretched vocals. It all makes for traumatizing funeral death/doom, but while the song’s harsh lurching movements pile on the ominousness, the vast chasms between notes are of equal importance. “Aeon Tenebris - Aeo Lacrimis” builds layers of oppressive sound across plunging depths of despair, and Sinistrous Diabolus ensures that the all-important and discomforting feeling that you’re about to plummet to your demise is always there.


Traumatic depths are something Vassafor’s multi-instrumentalist and vocalist VK knows all about too. In 2012, Vassafor released the Obsidian Codex, and the album was a masterpiece of Stygian and esoteric black metal. The 96-minute double LP was an absolute tour de force of doom-drenched tremolo pickings, pitch-black aberrant death metal, inhuman snarls, and suffocating occult atmospherics. Obsidian Codex was grand in vision, complete in realisation, and made zero accommodations. It was one of black metal’s most strident releases, and Vassafor brings that same sense of pitiless, unyielding power to their two songs on this split release.

Vassafor provides one original track here, “Ossuary in Darkness”, and one cover, “Son Of The Moon”, which was originally performed by Greek black metal legends Varathron. The 15-minute “Ossuary in Darkness” threads sepulchral wrath through a diabolic requiem, with grinding black metal and beastial vocals bursting, recoiling, and attacking again through a thick brume of spine-chilling doom. “Son Of The Moon”, sees Vassafor keep the raw Hellenic riff of the original song front and centre, while tearing another ritualistic rent in reality around it with an extraordinary level of iron-fisted intensity.

Aesthetically, Vassafor and Sinistrous Diabolus’ alignment on this split makes perfect sense, on many levels. Ideologically, the two bands are equally dedicated to crafting uncompromising music, and each has a legacy of recordings that show a total commitment to that. You’re either on board with this eldritch duo or not, and there are no accommodations made for weak-willed or timid souls on this split release. Sonically, both bands revel in apocalyptic sounds and visions, welcomingly embracing chaos, devastation, and malevolence. Black, death, or doom metal are portals for Vassafor and Sinistrous Diabolus. They’re gateways to other dimensions, other states of being and understanding. All to be fearlessly torn open, with catastrophic noise.

Ultimately, what is most important about this split release, is that Vassafor and Sinistrous Diabolus underscore that true integrity imbued in true art makes for mesmerising creativity. That ensures this release feels like a genuine trip to hell, although, keep in mind, there’s no guarantee you'll be making the return journey.

[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]

Sinistrous Diabolus - Total Doom//Desecration

Written by Craig Hayes.


Twenty years. That's how long we've waited for Sinistrous Diabolus's debut full-length, Total Doom//Desecration. Back in 1993 the Christchurch, New Zealand-based band released Opus One, a three-song cassette that has long been recognized as one of Australasia's most influential extreme metal demos. Opus One was reissued recently by Dark Descent and Goat Gear (selling out immediately), and its importance for NZ's underground metal scene--or for anyone who has drawn inspiration from its chasms of putrescent death and even more festering doom--can't be understated.

In the world of lugubrious Antipodean death and doom you can certainly hear Opus One's echo to this day. Much like similarly revered NZ metal veterans Vassafor, who recently released their throttling full-length debut, Obsidian Codex, Sinistrous Diabolus played a crucial role in constructing the aesthetic framework of the gloomiest, dankest, and staunchest end of the NZ metal scene. Things have come full circle in recent years for the band’s frontman, N.K.S., as his role in providing eerie noise-scapes on Stone Angels' magnificently shadowy sludge debut, 2011's Within the Witch, has seen members of that band join Sinistrous Diabolus’s current line-up. However, the darkest gods have truly aligned with N.K.S having also featured in the line-up of NZ's most (in)famous doom cult acts Witchrist and Diocletian--and both bands continue to honor the artistic vision Sinistrous Diabolus first evoked back in 1993.

Given Sinistrous Diabolus's history, legacy, and influence, and of course the unabashed title of Total Doom//Desecration, it'll come as no surprise to hear that the album’s contents are supremely dark and iniquitous. If references are required, think of it as a blend of the old-guard of death and doom (Incantation, Asphyx, Thergothon, and disEmbowelment) meeting newer purveyors of morbid and malicious eccentricity (Abyssal, Mitochondrion, or Portal). However, keep in mind, N.K.S has been honing the blade for 20 or so years now, and Sinistrous Diabolus do have a sound very much of their own. They call to mind the classics, of course, how could they not? But somewhere in that mix of old and new is Sinistrous Diabolus, crouching in a cave, roasting the bones of sacrificed Christians over a roaring fire.

Total Doom//Desecration is 40-plus minutes of Stygian atmospherics and soul-crushing, grinding doom. Within, Sinistrous Diabolus revisit older tracks, reconstructing them into more intimidating form, with monolithically heavy and murky passages of faster death-metal riffing, and grim soundscapes burying melodies under churning, frequently harrowing, requiems.

"Wipe out Christianity (Exordium)", and the 12 minutes of ritualized misery on "Wipe out Christianity (Pestis)" seethe with an (obvious) abhorrence of doctrine and divinity. The hawkish chimes and drones--flecked with Orthodox timbres and battering percussion--on "Gate of Hell" plummet into the uber-downtuned roil of "Sleep of the Damned Pt. I". And the album's highlight, "The Essence of Divinity Given to Abstractions of the Human Mind", is a colossally menacing composition--inexorably building layer upon layer of apprehension and tension towards its maelstrom-like zenith.

What defines Total Doom//Desecration is Sinistrous Diabolus's ability to maintain a sense of trepidation and corruption, underscored by intense despair. Alternating between old-school mid-tempo lurches, pitch-black feedbacking noise, and surges of dissonance and technicality intensifies the palpable reverberations--and drowning harmony in quagmires of immeasurable filth only amplifies the undercurrent of torment and torture.

Total Doom//Desecration is utterly barbaric, but not just musically. Sinistrous Diabolus conjures dread, and it's a perverted and pitiless kind too--the band taking obvious pleasure in generating plenty of discomfort. The album makes for disconcerting listening, but, of course, it’s that unsettling nature that makes it such a successful release. It evokes what we all ponder in our darkest moments, and what any fan of catastrophic doom adores; that relentless and inescapable march to death.

The production on Total Doom//Desecration deserves mention too, because no such catalogue of ruination is ever going to be effective without the appropriate audio wretchedness. The album is thick and sludgy, and magnificently oppressive. With a similar mass, though less ornate, than a latter-day Esoteric, Total Doom//Desecration comes with all the raw asphyxiating weight of Winter or Indesinence. Vocals are scraped from the bowels of the earth, with sepulchral growls and indecipherable guttural chants reinforcing the album’s bone-chilling harshness. Instrumentally, the pummeling percussion, rupturing bass, and distortion-laden guitars have equally important (and equally audible) roles in contributing to the significant and notably tarnished magnitude. But what is also of note is what's behind all the noise. In those moments when Total Doom//Desecration is at its most somber, and the yawning mouth of its godforsaken depths are most exposed, there's a strong sense of something truly malevolent lurking within--something just out of sight, but something that repeated listens will clearly draw to the surface.

Ultimately, Total Doom//Desecration is ample reward for the wait. Obviously, expectations were high, but N.K.S is an artist bent to perfection, so wait we did--and it didn't help that he suffered a horrendous hand injury in an industrial accident a couple of years back. Still, it's 2013, and the debut is here, and for fans of deafening death and doom with an ear for old-school intensity (and a boiling hatred of religion) then Total Doom//Desecration is well worth checking out. For any metal fan in the southern hemisphere, it’s obviously an essential purchase; for everyone else, doubly so. After all, Total Doom//Desecration is a piece of cult metal history, and we can only hope the future is just as musically formidable and forlorn.

[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]

Note: Opus One is available as a free download on the group's Bandcamp page. You can get Total Doom//Desecration there too, but beware that it seems you will only be getting half the album if you buy it there...

Sinistrous Diabolus - Total doom​, ​Total death

Deep down the metal underground we find Sinistrous Diabolus, a doom band from New Zealand. Total doom​, ​Total death is a re-recording of a one man live set. The stand out track is a dark and beautiful cover of the Dead Can Dance classic Host of Serafin. Listen to it below and read this fascinating interview with the man behind Sinistrous Diabolus.

[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]