Brutal yet melodic Dutch-German black metal fire team Sammath plan to unleash their latest album, Across the Rhine Is Only Death, during early second quarter 2019. This album extends their work on Godless Arrogance which took the grandeur of Strijd to its logical conclusion given the increasing viciousness and technicality of intervening albums.

A preview of the new album, Across the Rhine Is Only Death, shows an increasing use of death metal and grindcore intensity to offset the melodic core of each song, with the weaving of those melodies within savage sawing riffs also increasing in subtlety, allowing its final revelation in the presentation of the inner core of its structural development to be even more majestic.

Sammath may have had four iterations at this point. The first album showed us a style distinct from Norsecore, based more on Finnish-style angry riffs leading up to elegant revelations of an underlying melodic theme, and the second and third albums added a relentless German labyrinth of riffs to this, while the fourth album introduced a progressive rock style of varied internal structure and presentation of its parts in firmly delineated themes.

With its fourth period, Sammath introduces its original idea with the savagery of its middle period and the clear segmentation of its progressive period, then mixes in additional brutality — possibly influenced by Kaeck among others — so that the beauty of black metal emerges from something that seems chaotic but is the opposite, an order based on violence and ambiguity but immutable principles.

Tags: Black Metal, sammath