Inter Arma - Sulphur English (2019)

Inter Arma might be metal’s biggest success story of this decade. Coming hot off an era where post-metal exploded and fizzled, where ISIS was born and passed and Neurosis began to necrotize, Inter Arma have been relatively critique-proof. The cross-over darlings have enjoyed a career which has cambered upwards with each slab of long-form sludge aggression, thriving while the rest of their ilk have flatlined. With Sulpher English the band gain even more traction heading into the next decade.

Answering for Paradise Gallows’ comparatively sunny disposition, their latest mires itself in the band’s early period. Songs like “A Waxen Sea” burn with an Ulcerate-like conflagration, while “Citadel” lurches with the boiling intensity of a Fister track. “Howling Lands,” meanwhile trades the overt intensity for an unsettling cadence of tribalistic drums fitting a modern Cobalt piece. But for all the name dropping, Inter Arma are able to pull out an ill-fitting 70s prog worship song and make it work like no one else. Because of this, Sulphur English is both a career spanning bow on an admirable decade and a determined look toward the future.