Azell to release Astralis in October!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R54AvnPXV8

Hailing from Louisville, Kentucky Azell are a two piece band who have been conjuring up the heaviest sounds imaginable since 2022. Combining dark, sci-fi stories with monolithic doom and a raw, corrosive aesthetic they have forged their own sound – space sludge – standing apart in the crowded underground extreme music scene. Their debut album, Death Control, hit with seismic impact in 2024, garnering critical acclaim from around the globe, with Ave Noctum declaring it “a dense, aggressive, and spellbindingly innovative body of work” that boded well for the future. Well, that future has now arrived, in the form of the second Azell album, Astralis and all the critics’ hopes and expectations have been fulfilled and surpassed.

In Azell’s typically ambitious and imaginative style, Astralis is a concept album, one that will be accompanied by a novella – described by the band as “a throwback to the pulp fiction novels of the early 20th century” – with each chapter of the novella being represented by a song from the album. The opening chapter is available now for fans who pick up the first single from Astralis, ‘From The Womb Of Oblivion’ via Bandcamp. And that first single and opening track is an incredible introduction to what Azell have achieved with this new album. It’s a fall into yawning chasms as the bass rattles below vast, languorous, sludge-wall riffs and Courtney Napier delivers an acerbic vocal performance of shocking intensity; raw and venomous, deep and monstrous. There is no let up as Astralis unfolds, the huge riffs keep pounding you down with blow after remorseless, relentless blow and an unearthly atmosphere radiates from each chord. Through the immeasurable, bottomless grooves and cosmic horror of ‘Monolithic Terror’ and the darkly regal ‘When Darkness Unfolds’ – like a coronation procession for undead kings or an interstellar caravan to oblivion – to the staggering ‘Waves Of Remembrance’, like shuddering concrete steeped in an alien sorrow beyond human words to define, Astralis drags you into its black maw and holds you captive, enthralled and consumed. There is no way to argue with the prophecy of doom offered up by ‘The End Is Inevitable’ as it marches in bleak despair to the album’s concluding masterpiece – ‘Time Slows To Nothing’. You can feel the faltering of the hands on the universal clock as they start to rust and the sense of all things winding down in crushing, overwhelming torpor as the band slowly drop the bpm; down, down, down to zero. A burst of saxophone is like a last flicker of life before the absolute end and Astralis leaves you speechless. Stunned.

Mixed and mastered by the band’s own David Napier, Astralis sounds superb. The weight of the drums, the thick morass of the guitar riffs, the searing vehemence of the vocals – they’re all captured perfectly. David has also supplied the album’s artwork which visualizes the otherworldly miasma which cloaks this devastating set of songs and the desolation that lies at their heart. Rottweiler Records will unveil the monumental edifice of Astralis on October 17th…the end is nigh.