Diabolic Oath – Oracular Hexations (Unrestrained Bestial Black Metal)

 

Another smasher from Sentient Ruin Laboratories, let’s start there. From there let’s move to the band, Diabolic Oath, a three-piece from Portland, Oregon, that insists on making the listener hallucinate. Oracular Hexations leaves the brain and all thoughts within it disfigured. What at first appears a dark story woven by a degenerate becomes far more hideous the further you go. You go in expecting something vile, and you end up with something worse. These guys absolutely do things their own way, but not in that garish sort of way.

   

Press release indicates these guys prefer the fretless path, and man I’m at least I’m pretending I hear it. The sweeps of patterns Diabolic Oath crafts are technical, yet extremely disorienting at times, especially at first listen. The amount of shifts in tempo and direction are impressive, but the triple-vocal approach lends their style even more power. Taking all the chaff out of some modern metal approaches where bands attempt to intimidate through sheer complexity, Hideous Oath provide an attainable type of sound, yet one that leaves the listener unstable. Even after five separate listens I’m not only finding something new, I feel like I’ve never heard it before, and I’m definite it’s due to brain damage.

 

Diabolic Oath Official Facebook

Written by Stanley, Devourer of Souls

Diabolic Oath – Oracular Hexations
Sentient Ruin Laboratories
Cover Art: Khaos Diktator Design (Stefan Todorović)
4.5 / 5