CYNABARE URNE's highly anticipated debut album, Obsidian Daggers and Cinnabar Skulls. Much like debut albums should, Obsidian Daggers and Cinnabar Skulls encapsulates CYNABARE URNE's past whilst pointing the way for their future, displaying the band's best qualities and, in turn, revealing new (and darker, deadlier) truths. Right from the opening notes, the album exudes that miles-wide sense of space the band created early on…and then they proceed to CRUSH the listener with malevolent Metal of Death steeped in the ancients and with a miasmic sense of melody. Moving at many speeds, mesmerizing at every one, always flowing and always filthily, CYNABARE URNE's attack is neither strictly old-school nor new-school; stylistic nods span Sadistic Intent to Necros Christos, classic Grave to recent Dead Congregation, early Vader to later Repugnant, and plenty of other points in between. In a word: timeless. Thusly armed, the trio exhibit a masterful grasp of songcraft, imbuing their ever-twisting creations with dynamics and nuance as bountifully as they do genuine evil and menace. Likewise, the ever-pervasive sense of ritualism elevates these 10 tracks to more than just "death metal songs," like shadowy transmissions from the beyond made flesh and then harnessed with no small amount of magick. Even the production itself, both palpably physical and eerily atmospheric, becomes a ghastly, gestating-ichorously thing, wrapping its Lovecraftian tendrils around the listener and never letting go… Darkness. Doom. DEATH. Graced with suitably horrific cover artwork courtesy of Ville Salonen, CYNABARE URNE's Obsidian Daggers and Cinnabar Skulls is bound to be THE death metal debut album of the year!
