Nightfly Gateway To The Antisphere is the second album from German death metal band Sulphur Aeon. Their debut, Swallowed By The Oceans Tide was a stunning piece of dark and brutal death metal, inspired by the stories of H.P. Lovecraft. Gateway is clearly from the same place, the Lovecraftian imagery of the eye catching cover giving the game away.

Gateway To the Antisphere is a dense and brutal piece of work, complex, with great musicianship, though not quite entering the realms of technical death metal like Nile for example though like them, making use of middle eastern influenced melodies now and then. The production is thick and a little muddy but seems to suit the darkness and heaviness of the music but pleasingly everything can still be clearly heard. Sulphur Aeon have come up with some of the most captivatingly dissonant and inventive death metal riffs (courtesy of the brilliant T) I’ve heard in some time and it never lets up on quality for the full eleven tracks though Onwards… Towards Kadath is a late highlight. D’s drumming (yes, the band all go by an initial) is particularly jaw dropping, blastbeats a plenty of course but throwing in loads of great fills that help really drive the music on and add to the cacophonous nature of it all.

Sulphur Aeon have delivered the goods again and come up with my favourite death metal album of the year so far. I haven’t heard the new Nile album yet (due to the vinyl version being delayed…damn!) and I have high expectations but it’s going to have to pull out all the stops to beat this monstrous slab of metal.