COSCRADH Nahanagan Stadial DIGIPAK [CD]

Since their formation in 2015, Coscradh have been one of Ireland’s best-kept secrets simply by virtue of never having released a full-length. Patiently and persistently – and through a few lineup changes, too – the band came to embody a unique grimy ‘n’ gutted sort of black/death METAL, as their debut demo in 2016 and successive EPs in 2017 and 2021 finessed new hideous shape out of that dread ore. Not withstanding that Coscradh also honored their Gallic roots with that ancient tongue and attendant thematics…

Alas, the time has arrived for Coscradh‘s full-length debut: Nahanagan Stadial. The album’s title is an Irish term for a rapid onset of a glacial period 10,000 years ago, rendering life extinct. A massive rise in oceans blocked out the sun, and coronal mass ejections and sunbursts hit the planet, overturning civilization, which brought a new ice age upon the island of Ireland. Perhaps fittingly, Coscradh sonically approximate such upheaval with a ceaselessly roiling attack that’s alternately their clearest and most overwhelming iteration of that by-now-trademark sound. From bestial explosions to quicksand whirlpools to old-fashioned asskicking thrust, the quartet give a masterclass here in timeless death energy, imbued with a wild-eyed sturm und drang that’s blanching to behold. And the fact that they don’t hide behind miles of murk only heightens the strength of their songwriting across this five-song/41-minute plunge into eldritch depths.

Four pits of brutal ritual death, by hanging, sword, burning and bludgeoning, spat forth in the ancient language of South Uist, Gàidhlig: Nahanagan Stadial is Coscradh‘s penultimate statement of savagery!