DEATH SS
PRESS
The Entity
LUCIFER RISING
Italy’s influential occult metallers return transcendent
Outside of their native Italy, horror metal progenitors Death SS have spent a 48year career in the shadows, despite casually acing the most lurid presentation concept in the business, and backing it up with weirdly hypnotic songs that sound like nobody else. Frontman Steve Sylvester has guided multiple line-ups through variable phases, but with this 11th album we are firmly back in the groovy graveyard where goth and glam seduce doom and horror movie soundtracks, and it’s glorious. The metal is rippingly heavy, the solos are orgiastic, and the drums are thunderous. But the rich production bubbles with sonic quirks, while Steve’s visionary eccentricity is given free rein on a bonkers narrative concept in which Aleister Crowley summons a horde of Victorian ne’erdo-wells. Watch out Papa V, the OGs are nipping at your bony heels…