"The melodies are both sweet and sour, all the time interweaving and changing patterns and tempos, eventually leeching onto your skin, and sucking on all that crimson lifeblood"

Senzar play a vicious style of metal that feeds off many styles, spiralling through ruthless, old-school death-metal riffs to the malevolence of a post-black blitzkrieg. This murderous and spiteful delivery wreaks havoc from the moment Pyre Of Throes opens. The album has eight giant tracks, each one delivered with measured ferocity and angst, with an intensity that keeps the album alive and all-consuming.

Aldebaran’s Shine digs deep into the spirit of the death-metal gods with the opening dialogue "Enchanting tone, a melody forlorn, Adrift in the music of the spheres. Ethereal song over tempest’s gale, seduced of the mesmerising of the ocean". This passage is menacingly followed by a gravelled and gritty vocal delivery married with heaving rhythm guitars and brutally beaten drums. It’s an intense opening few minutes, but you’ve got to love every minute of it.

Cosmogenesis opens with a blistering blast beat assault that gets smothered in hellish screams and thundering riffs. The melodies are both sweet and sour, all the time interweaving and changing patterns and tempos, eventually leeching onto your skin, and sucking on all that crimson lifeblood. This is quickly followed by Unforgiving Twilight which carries the torch for more old school death metal hooks and underlying melodies.

The Sadness Will Last Forever lays siege right from the off with its torrent of power and might, only to be lost in a dreamy psychedelic vacuum momentarily, until the track erupts once more with the deadliest of riffs and the most ruthless of bass lines. Zenith is a steady and more measured affair with a heavy cloud of doom suspended above the track, giving little room to breathe, allowing the gloom and melancholy to smother and engulf your senses. The bass playing on this track is the highlight for me, as it guides and leads the charge right to the end. Even on the following track Elegy Of The Fading Cello the bass guitar is front and centre, piling misery and hardship onto the listener. Lead guitars flash over cut-throat riffs and cold-blooded vocals all the way until the final words whisper "In this theatre ethereal walls resound of silence. The act… is over, the curtain… had come down". Another brilliant track.

A Black Hole Devouring A Star and Of Embers reiterate Senzar’s ability to fuse and incorporate various styles of heaviness into an album in order to keep it interesting and layered. The sheer heaviness and brutality of the band is carefully coupled with the track compositions and their blatant technical ability. Senzar aren’t new to the game, and have been around since 2018, when they released their self-titled debut. Pyre Of Throes is a positive step forward in terms of song writing and finding the right balance between moments of calm and all-out aural assaults! With some impressive merch also available on their Bandcamp page, these Dublin lads deserve some of your time and money. Senzar will be around for a while yet.