With Sacrilege Infernus, Lethal Prayer offers a faithful yet expansive continuation of Spiritual Decay, and it adheres to the variegated song structures that defined earlier works from the band while allowing broader influences to permeate the release.

Though every musician delivers a performance of considerable virtuosity, the album is, above all, a guitarist’s conquest reminiscent in spirit to Morbid Angel’s Formulas Fatal to the Flesh with certain leads at times resembling Trey Azagthoth’s in complexity and expressive fervor. While death metal remains the album’s primary expression, there is an evolution toward more exploratory forms with echoes of 1970s progressive rock surfacing throughout.

This is not to say that Lethal Prayer are operating in the pseudo-progressive pretension of bands like Blood Incantation. What Lethal Prayer accomplishes is deeply lived-in, the result of musicians who have fully absorbed their influences such that even the more eclectic moments of Sacrilege Infernus emerge with a sense of purpose and makes sense in the overall presentation. This is wild man music with legitimate flashes of creative genius.

Given that Belial once handled guitar and vocals in Incantation, that heritage leaves a clear impression on this release. You can hear the influence in the frenzied pinch harmonics scattered throughout, and some riffs would not feel out of place on Diabolical Conquest. That said, this is far from a conventional album.

Songs don’t flow into each other so much as explode in different directions, and there’s even a cover of Rush’s Bastille Day positioned in the middle of the tracklist. Moreover, several of the departures from traditional death metal are quite formidable, particularly exemplified in the track “Valar Morghulis,” whose tangents are expounded upon at a very high level.

It is no exaggeration to assert that this is the most compelling metal album I have heard in recent years; it is very Dionysian. For those interested in obtaining a CD of Sacrilege Infernus, contact Belial via https://lethalprayer.com/contact.

Tags: death metal, Lethal Prayer