On October 31st internationally, Purity Through Fire is proud to present the ninth album of Greece’s Sad, Fullmoon’s Bestial Awakening, on CD and A5 digipack formats. The vinyl LP version will follow later in 2025: SAD – Fury Long Lost – Trackpremiere 2025
Since 2005, Greece’s Sad have been a madly prolific bastion of pure ’n‘ cold black metal. Their canon is vast and varied – VERY relatively so, given that this is all-caps BLACK METAL after all – with the longstanding duo of instrumentalist Ungod and vocalist Nadir exploring the darkest corridors of their souls every step of the way. They did so across a half-dozen albums for such esteemed labels as Drakkar, Obscure Abhorrence, and Old Temple among others as well as a dozen splits, but then joined forces with Purity Through Fire in 2020 for the release of their seventh album, Misty Breath of Ancient Forests, and again in 2023 for Black Metal Craft.
Proudly remaining in the Purity Through Fire stronghold, Sad return with their ninth(!) album, Fullmoon’s Bestial Awakening. While its title might be something of an aesthetic misnomer – this is NOT bestial metal, thankfully – Fullmoon’s Bestial Awakening does keep intact the nastiness of Black Metal Craft, making for a complementary record to its cantankerous predecessor. Sad here are characteristically unconcerned with anything in „black metal“ during this millennium, still harkening to the glorious late ’90s heyday of Sombre Records or the aforementioned Drakkar and yet tempered with the wisdom & resolve surely established by a band who’ve been around 25 years now. No more but definitely no less, Fullmoon’s Bestial Awakening is raw & ripping orkishness shot through with a touch of the melancholic but all stirred malevolently, where hypnotic speed – cruise, gallop, headbang, or any combination thereof – often rights itself into something somewhat regal or at least triumphant. And just like that not-inconsiderable predecessor, Sad’s ninth full-length similarly stretches toward the epic, encompassing eight songs in 55 minutes of righteous obsidian splendor. Cold, old, and still no surrender!
