Posted in Whathaveyou on June 6th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
With distribution set up throughout Latin America, Europe and the UK, and the US, Costa Rican doomers Crypt Monarch seem well primed to catch ears and eyes with their newly-announced forthcoming album, Codex Pestilentia. The band lay out the storyline basics below — it’s 200 years after the events of 2021’s The Necronaut (review here), for example — and there’s a song streaming that’s just under 10 minutes long, so when the record comes out nobody gets to say they didn’t know what was about to hit them. Dig that chug, y’all.
Planetary preorder links and all that follow. Some of it’s from socials. I think maybe some was in a Bandcamp email the other day? Either way, I promise you I didn’t just make it up and put it in blue. I know we live in a post-truth time, but if we can’t keep our stoner rock press releases and band-posted info sacred, I dare say that as a species humanity is truly lost.
Or doomed, if you’d prefer.
So, from the internet:
Crypt Monarch is back with their second album Codex Pestilentia.
We return to Uxarraci land, 200 years after the events of The Necronaut album.
After centuries of desolation and destruction caused by the strange creatures that came back to life alongside the Necronaut, humanity searches for a cursed text to seal evil and destroy its source.
The King designating, Rex Septentriones, last descendant of the Necronaut’s lineage, prepares a battalion for a journey full of danger, death and uncertainty. Plotting its route to the Kiv’von continent, in search of Codex Pestilentia, the latest weapon against darkness.
In a race against the clock, the King and his troops traverse deserts, lakes, oceans and mountains to reach their destiny, to save what remains of humanity.
Our new single War of the Gargantuan (Aquadome) is available NOW on Spotify and Bandcamp.
Vinyl in Conspiracy with @things_from_beyond
Tracklisting: 1. Terror From Above 2. Cultus Solis Aeterni 3. Two Sleeps 4. War of the Gargantuan (Aquadome) 5. Eaten by the Castle of Flies (Pt. 1 Acid Chambers / Pt. 2 Dark Dawn)
Recorded and produced by Crypt Monarch @ Cabin in the Woods Recordings. Coronado, Costa Rica. All songs written by Crypt Monarch. Cover Art by Alexey Gorboot (@alexeygorboot). Layout by Cerrabuz.
Costa Rican death sludge four-piece VoidOath are set to issue their first full-length, Ascension Beyond Kokytus, Sept. 30 through Cursed Monk Records and Cognitive Discordance Records. The project bears relation to the likewise-longform Crypt Monarch in guitarist/vocalist Christopher G. De Haan (who may or may not have also produced) and guitarist Jose Rodríguez, as well as Age of the Wolf in De Haan and drummer Gabriel Ortiz — VoidOath is completed by bassist Allan Salas — and the album follows 2020’s debut EP, Illumination Through Necromancy, which was one of any number of gruesome death-doom-infused offerings that, in that wretched year, felt just right for the moment being lived. And so I’m not just parroting PR wire info at you that you can read for yourself in blue below, Ascension Beyond Kokytus is a horror narrative lyrically, though to be perfectly honest, these songs could be about sunshine and puppies and rainbows and if they sounded like this, that’d probably still be true.
And with that bit of context out of the way, let us now consume rot. Don’t be fooled by the bit of brighter progressive flourish in the opening riff of “From Gods to Morsels (Destruction)” as the album rounds out, VoidOath are here for death. De Haan‘s vocals are either gut-born growls or far back shouts, and they occur in such a mire of low-wash tone that even when the band are playing fast — which they do from time to time across the five-song/49-minute offering — it’s hard to tell just how much the song is actually moving. Maybe that’s an exaggeration as the 15-minute opener and longest track (immediate points) “Orion-Cygnus Descent (Arrival)” launches into blasts and stretches of abyssal churning, but Ascension Beyond Kokytus is nothing if not exaggerated, pulling elements of sludge, atmospheres of filth-coated slow death metal and just an edge of post-metallic drone to coincide into their particular sphere of cohesive extremity. There is purpose to the music beyond backing the story being told lyrically, and as “Festered Sepsis Lacerations (Assimilation)” (premiering below) crushes as the most straight-ahead death metal inclusion — shades of un-Egyptified Nile, Incantation, etc. — the overarching groove would be a lifeline were it not the very undercurrent pulling you continually downward.
The last, let’s say dying, distortion of “Festered Sepsis Lacerations (Assimilation)” leads to a brief centerpiece interlude in “A Flare in Emptiness” — it could easily have been the start of the subsequent “Alabaster Ruminations (Isolation)” and I suspect from its placement and title that its use as a bridge from one half of the tracklist to the other is a momentary, almost subconscious, break from the onslaught — and the inhale before VoidOath dive back in is welcome. Vague speech, either sampled or not, tops the initial rollout of “Alabaster Ruminations (Isolation),” and what emerges after is noisier and less generally hinged, but ultimately settles after about the eight-minute mark into a steadier push, soon topped with high-blood-pressure leads and an interplay of higher throatrippers and low growls — the harmony of decay — before giving way suddenly to the aforementioned riff to “From Gods to Morsels (Destruction)” and its reassertion of marching bludgeonry. Some gallop, some push, but the balance is decisive and the judgment is harsh as VoidOath work toward setting up the all-out force of the last five or so minutes, moving from crash-cymbal-driven lumbering to start-stop hits, to squibbly gallop, a build of intensity (ha!) and a last fade of residual noise, like the threat moving away at last.
Imagine being picked up by some very, very large hand and squeezed until your ribs break and entrails come spewing out of your various orifices like so much chunky juice from a piece of fruit. So it is that VoidOath execute their debut album.
Kokytus, in Greek mythology, is one of the five rivers surrounding Hades. It is safe to assume that in ascending beyond it, one is well and truly fucked.
“Festered Sepsis Lacerations (Assimilation)” premieres below. Enjoy if you can:
Cognitive Discordance Records, in conspiracy with Cursed Monk Records, is proud to announce the debut full-length of Costa Rica’s abysmal sludge conjurers VoidOath. Titled Ascension Beyond Kokytus, the horror-themed conceptual album will be out on 30 September 2022. For the American release, Cognitive Discordance Records (Costa Rica) is issuing a limited run of Jewel Case CDs; for the UK/European release, Cursed Monk Records (Ireland) is releasing a limited edition of digipak CDs.
The dark, heavy and melt-inducing sound of VoidOath is the outcome of their approach to illustrate diverse horror works in a disturbing, frantic and distorted way. Their first EP, Illumination Through Necromancy, released in May 2020, was well received. The San José doom monstrosity VoidOath is now poised to reveal Ascension Beyond Kokytus, their first full-length release, deep within the cold, frost and blood in the farthest and isolated regions on the planet. Ascension Beyond Kokytus is based on John W. Campbell Jr’s Who Goes There? (Frozen Hell) and its adaptation of John Carpenter’s film The Thing (1982). Dwelling on deep feelings of fear, despair, loneliness and horror, the album drowns its listener in seamlessly endless waves of crushing violence and noise.
Track Listing: 01. Orion-Cygnus Descent (Arrival) (15:45) 02. Festered Sepsis Lacerations (Assimilation) (6:31) 03. A Flare in Emptiness (0:31) 04. Alabaster Ruminations (Isolation) (13:23) 05. From Gods to Morsels (Destruction) (12:52)
Produced, mixed and mastered by A Cabin in the Woods Recordings (Crypt Monarch, Engraved). Artwork by Nataly Nikitina. Layout by Cerrabuz.
—BAND LINEUP— Christopher De Haan – Guitars, Vocals Gabriel Ortiz – Drums Jose Rodríguez – Guitars, Synths Allan Salas – Bass
