Album Review: Imperium Dekadenz – Into Sorrow Evermore (Napalm Records)

Lords of black metal Imperium Dekadenz raise darkness from the depths of southwestern Germany’s Black Forest once more with their new album, Into Sorrow Evermore, to be unleashed on January 20th, 2023, via Napalm Records.

Blending the sound of icy cold black metal with dark atmosphere and fiendish ambience, Imperium Dekadenz reach into pits of despair and pull the wriggling innards of hell itself. Into Sorrow Evermore is a very bleak record, but it’s also born of fire and fury, as only black metal can be.

From the moment the title track sends electric jolts through the body, as Imperium Dekadenz’s gloomy ambience and intense heaviness takes hold, there’s no denying the mark this album is going to leave. The cacophony of noise growing in strength and stature, the atmosphere becoming choking, and the sense of impending doom becoming so prevalent.

All that in the first track. Simply phenomenal.

Following that is the pairing of Truth of Stars and Aurora, where an even more explosive level of heaviness is showcased across the two tracks. Imperium Dekadenz’s instrumental savagery and twisted ambience reach cavernous and cosmic levels here. Two engorged examples of how equally wild and wonderful Imperium Dekadenz can be.

There may be nothing as excessively ambient and heavy as Elysian Fields though. The clattering of instruments and howling vocals working in tandem with a sinister layer of gloom.

In contrast, Forest in Gale is unbridled and brash blackened heaviness. Followed then by the album’s ‘epic’, Awakened Beyond Dreams. A gargantuan effort that twists unsettling atmosphere around the misshapen monstrosity that is Imperium Dekadenz’s black metal sound. Nowhere is that better exemplified by the tone shift that comes at around the halfway point. Another simply exceptional track from this exceptional band.

They’re not quite done yet though, hitting even darker and horrifying depths with crawling chaos of November Monument. Before Memories… A Raging River closes out the album in blackened harmonious fashion. The darkness fully enveloping the mind, body and soul like a death shroud.

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