In the ancient world, early humans first encountered the chemical sulphur around volcanoes, hot springs, mines, and in their contact with incendiary materials. And since those primordial times, philosophers and magicians have identified this inflammatory substance as an active, malevolent principle, a burning force of inversion.

Because sulphur emerges from volcanic and subterranean places, burns with an eerie blue flame, and because its combustion generates toxic, choking sulphur dioxide that disinfects, fumigates, and poisons, it came to be associated with purification. It smelt like a marker of the boundaries between life, death and decay. And so, because it emerged from deep underground, it was commonly associated with the underworld, the infernal fiery realms that dominate all religious and occult traditions pretty much everywhere.

In ancient Greece, sulphur, therion, was associated with the divine. Within that cosmology, acolytes of the deity Hephaestus (the god of fire) and of Hades (the lord of the underworld) burned sulphur not as intrinsically infernal acts, but rather as an instrument of sacred purification. After all, in the Homeric tradition, King Odysseus calls for sulphur and fire to fumigate the aura of his palace after the slaughter of the intruders who had overrun it.

So it’s not in the least bit surprising that the idea of divine or metaphysical punishment and retribution for the many crimes, perversions and all-round degeneracy of homo sapiens has taken such a deep root in Black Metal. With a core aesthetic built on concepts of the most primitive violence, blasphemous hatred, and complete sonic devastation, artists like Revenge, Blasphemy, Bestial Warlust and, of course, Finland’s legendary Beherit have long since laid the groundwork for bestial, brutal Black Death Metal hell-bent on inflicting maximum sonic damage to human society.

Sulphuric Deity, formed in the port city of Sunderland in the North East of England, are new, deadly and extremely violent exponents of Bestial Black Metal, with recordings reeking of sulphur-choked fury, brutal aggression and utter hatred. This year’s initial demo release, Demonstration MMXXVI, set the stage, acting as a warning for what was to come.

New release Extermination Hammer is little short of the most corrosive exercise in sulphur-burning revenge imaginable. Its short, Satanic hammer-like tracks evoke fury and a profound sense of claustrophobia that presages the swift and irrevocable blow of metaphysical retribution from which the human world has no chance of escape. Each of the EPs five ruthlessly malevolent tracks, from opener Extermination Hammer to Eternal Night of War to closing composition Total Spiritual Annihilation, deliver death blows to the skull of worthless human moronity amid the pungent stench of sulphur and the incendiary purification that consumes all.

Made up of RS (guitars), IH (drums), and NH (vocals), Sulphuric Deity evokes the purest, deadliest sense of an impending end-time for the wretched human species yet conceived by Black Metal musicians. And they are yet another example of why UK Black Metal is now increasingly leading the pack with innovative releases replete with the sense of that malign, primitive evil that first carved out Black Metal many decades ago.

Sulphuric Deity have created a bleak ritual atmosphere created from the menace of wailing sirens, rain and a nihilistic bunker-like ambience. They deliver the sense of sulphur as an active demonic fire, a sovereign metaphysical force with war and plague as instruments of imminent cosmic collapse. Order will dissolve; the divine hierarchy will become inverted, with sulphur as the prevailing divine essence. Because one single blow from the extermination hammer is enough to prove that war, not redemption, is the final language of the divine.

 

Bandcamp: https://www.sulphuricdeity.bandcamp.com

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