In a long overdue return, Portugal’s The Ominous Circle rise again from the mist with their sophomore album “Cloven Tongues of Fire”, a deeper descent into the great, endless chasms. A maelstrom of fire and relentless chaos that defies everything in this age of empty standards and sterile paradigms, the new full-length effort represents their darkest, most intense and uncompromising manifest to date, both a witness to the wickedness of iniquity and a tribute to the arts of the extreme.

 Sophisticated yet raw, dynamic and fierce, presenting a different approach to songwriting while continuing the path of 2017’s acclaimed “Appalling Ascension”, “Cloven Tongues of Fire” delivers 43 minutes of black-infused Death metal with monolithic slabs of doom. A defaced abomination of low-tuned impious riffing, dissonant patterns and wildfire rhythms, from the manic blasting of “Through Tunnels Ablaze” to the gargantuan epic that is “Utterance of the Formless”, forming a tome of Dark Death Metal necromancy.

 Its organic production harks back to ancient times and is crowned with Dan Lowndes’ mastering magic to forge an opus of filth, blood and venom where new elements merge with old facets to spawn an opus of labyrinthine shapes and blaze-laden cacophony. Unapologetic and confrontational, “Cloven Tongues of Fire” is a testimony of the awe-inspiring splendour of Death.