Artist: Sepulchral Lamentations
Country: Austria
Label: TSC Productions
Formats: Digital
Year: 2025
Sepulchral Lamentations is a new one-man project from Austria, helmed by Stephan “Shathrazhul” Homschek who started creating music under this moniker only this year. Although he has some experience in other projects of which the oldest dates back to 2019, so although not quite a rookie in the business, his work remained largely tugged away in the deeper regions of the underground Extreme Metal scene. As a whole, I think Sepulchral Lamentations can be seen as a spiritual successor of Aeshma Daeva, a project that has a distinct Alcest-like dreamy character compared to the darker and more occult nature of this new musical vessel.
‘Manifestum Tertii Antichristii’ is a full-length that was only preceded by a 2-track single that was used as a teaser, so basically this is to be considered the band’s debut. It is a lengthy ride that presents a lot of good ideas and a certain sense for atmosphere, yet, and I have made this remark multiple times, it is just way too long. Home recording has many advantages that we are enjoying at a daily basis: it is easy, quick and cheap. As a result we are being treated to new music every day. But the downside is that it limits people’s sense of prioritizing. In other words, not every riff or idea is worth recording. ‘Manifestum Tertii Antichristii’ is a textbook example of an album that has some solid stuff going on, but is too heavily laden with pieces that really aren’t worth bothering with.
To make things even worse, the album has loads of movie samples. While that can be atmosphere enhancing, nobody’s waiting to hear minutes of conversations that break the overall flow of the album. With well over 70 minutes, ‘Manifestum Tertii Antichristii’ is just too much to handle and almost a torture to get through fully. If Stephan had kept just both his doomy riffs and the dark atmosphere and cut it down to, say, 20 minutes, it might have been a nice demo (not an album). From there it should be possible to build on a new career with riff-driven and slightly dynamic Doom/Black Metal. For now I think we should just let Stephan rehearse a bit more before we all take a dive in what he has to offer.
