As I have grown older, I have learned to enjoy the long wait between albums from bands that delivered something surprising and powerful that stirred my imagination and heart of hearts. The previous album from Italy’s Deadly Carnage, Through the Void, Above the Suns, landed on my year–end list in 2018. I lauded it for taking the listener “on a sublime journey through cosmos and the self, accompanied by the most beautiful and poignant post-black metal in recent memory.” Now the band is back with their new album Endless Blue. And it sure was worth the long wait.

To say that Endless Blue is an unbelievably beautiful, pensive and immersive album feels almost like a criminal understatement. Friends of Alcest and early Lantlôs will immediately enjoy Deadly Carnage’s emotional and painterly post-black metal, but on Endless Blue the band goes well beyond these associations and reference points. This is a concept album based on Japanese folklore and Urashima Tarō’s legend, which is crafted with reverence for the source material and refuses to resort to cheap dramatic gimmicks or lazy cultural appropriation (also, just look at that magnificent album art). Deadly Carnage has the creative wit and grace to deliver enriching syncretism and embellishment with their sophisticated use of bouzouki, lute, mandolin and erhu, instruments considered unconventional in the context of metal. The warm, lush and natural production which owes to the use of 1970s valve amps and analog effects and lack of drum samples warrants special recognition and praise.

Endless Blue flows elegantly as a single, cohesive piece of musical storytelling that pulls you into the marvel of folklore. Deadly Carnage excel in capturing entire worlds and epics into surprisingly brief and compact albums: Through the Void, Above the Suns was 45 minutes, while Endless Blue does not even breach the 40-minute mark. Everything is kept agile, succinct and impressively accessible and this is where one of the greatest strengths of the band is found, in the way they channel and convey the essential in all its richness with such impactful brevity, by understanding the importance of editing and of not artificially extending songs in pursuit of some idea of grandiosity that is doomed to remain elusive and ultimately collapse under its monolithic weight.

And those musical riches flow abundantly. The seamless transition from “Dying Sun” to “Sublime Connection” charges forward with blazing emotion and a radiance that resembles a youthful exuberance before taking a turn into gloomier territories before transforming into something heavenly and cathartic. Those who hunger for proper pummeling will be pleased at “Moans, Grief and Wails” as its first half delivers sweeping riffage and pounding drumming that could easily open up a pit in a live setting. 

“Mononoke” brings dynamic variety by starting as an ominous and tension-building affair that expands into mournful beauty and yearning and eventually reverts to the earlier dread and closes the circle. Initially, I was puzzled, wondering whether I was merely imagining that Alexios Ciancio is actually singing in Japanese or if my hearing was in fact accurate, but the immersion was not broken when experiencing such a mesmerizing tidal wave of sensations and atmosphere (spoiler alert: he is indeed singing in Japanese, yet another indication of the aforementioned reverence and artistic commitment). Alexios Ciancio’s alluring and irresistible vocals will immediately entrance first-time listeners and elevate the music, reaching incredible heights that manifest across the album, especially on “Swan Season” and the layered harmonies at the climax and conclusion thereof. In fact, his vocals are so stunning that their absence from otherwise excellent, value-adding instrumentals (“The Clue” and the closer “Unknown Shores”) serve as my only quasi-complaint. On other songs, there are moments when I am almost begging to hear more of his vocals, but their measured use is a prudent and wise artistic decision that provides more room and attention to the excellent songwriting and the entire band’s musicianship.

Endless Blue is a hauntingly gorgeous album which stays in your mind with melodies, passages and stories you find yourself reliving when you are alone, when something magical and dreamlike enters briefly into the quotidian world, during those fleeting moments when everything around you feels unusually evocative, vivid and unreal. 

— Zyklonius

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Endless Blue is available now on A Sad Sadness Song. For more information on Deadly Carnage, visit their Facebook page.