UMUR "Seven Crowns And Seven Seals" is the fourth full-length studio album by German death metal act Sulphur Aeon. The album was released through Van Records in October 2023. It´s the successor to "The Scythe of Cosmic Chaos" from December 2018. Five years is a pretty long time between album releases even these days, but Sulphur Aeon did release the "Unaussprechliche Kulte (Live at Culthe Fest 2019)" live album in 2020 as a stop gap release.

Stylistically the material on "Seven Crowns And Seven Seals" is a new musical direction for Sulphur Aeon. They still play a technical blackened death metal style, but the suffocating and at times chaotic layering of the previous releases have been replaced by clear and detailed production values, which provide the band´s music with an almost completely different sound. The transformation towards this more accessible sound was already initiated on "The Scythe of Cosmic Chaos", but Sulphur Aeon have taken this songwriting approach a step further on "Seven Crowns And Seven Seals". while the music can still be brutal, blasting, and heavy, Sulphur Aeon also incorporate a lot of atmospheric parts and the dynamics of the music also shifs a lot. When they are most melodic and atmospheric I´m sometimes reminded of Gojira, and that´s certainly not an influence I´ve heard in their music before.

It´s interesting how some artists stagnate while others continue to seek new musical discoveries and push the boundaries of their musical expression, but what´s more interesting is how fans of an artist perceive change and development of sound. In the case of Sulphur Aeon I´ve read opinions in both ends of the spectrum regarding their change from suffocating chaos to the more accessible sound on "Seven Crowns And Seven Seals", but to my ears this is a high quality release, which is both challenging, melodic, epic, and intriguing (but ultimately quite easily accessible for the genre). A 4 star (80%) rating is deserved.