Eternal Death announces September 26th as the international release date for Ordeals‚ debut album, Third Rail Prayer, on CD and vinyl LP formats.
Formed in 2011, Ordeals are a black / death trio hailing from New York City. What the band lacks in prolificness, they more than ably exceed in quality of craftsmanship. To date, the band released three short-lengths – the Apotheosis EP in 2016, a split with Daethorn in 2018, and the Choose Death EP in 2019 – hinting at the mastery to come across a full-length.
At least here, Ordeals‚ debut album bears the ominous title Third Rail Prayer. And such an askew title suits their sound like an iron fist lined with velvet: subterranean, disease-ridden black / death METAL that prominently displays a multitude of unique twists. For sure, Ordeals are mangled and gnarly at every turn, suggesting some of the rougher and rowdier cults from the old Australian scene, and yet there’s a quiet grandiosity to that sound. Emotion-rich melodies blaze with sulfurous fury, instilling visions of purple-black melodic black / death from ancient times. But the band’s songwriting is anything but straightforward; often beginning or especially ending in angular shapes, that fury bubbles over into bent & broken delirium, and Third Rail Prayer thus becomes something of a fight for survival. Still, there’s order within Ordeals‚ chaos, and the trio expertly allow a sense of dark, dread-inducing space to creep in, simmering the tension to a boil before head-caving crush comes: a spiraling descent into madness without resistance. Zealous Hellspell’s full-throated roars & strangulations illustrate this sonic hysteria with utterly blanching effect.
We are at end-times, and Ordeals yield to this inevitability; Third Rail Prayer is not so much the soundtrack to such as simply three men’s smokestack souls made manifest. To coincide with this long-awaited album’s arrival, Ordeals will be playing the Covenant fest the weekend of release.
