Skaphos - Cult of Uzura (2025) Hi-Res

Skaphos' 2025 album, "Cult of Uzura," marks their third full-length release and their first with a label, Transcending Obscurity Records. The French death/black metal band aims to deliver a sound that is both more expressive and impactful than their previous work. The album is described as a "beautiful rendering of the two extreme styles, spiked with mean dissonance and steeped in an aura of mysticism." The execution is noted as "ruthless and forceful despite showing subtlety in the emotive passages and deftness in the tempo changes."  

Metal Temple Magazine calls "Cult of Uzura" "a remarkable album in the death/black metal style that has actual substance along with the right aesthetics and sound.” The review highlights the "thick bed of guitars, lots of aggression, and guttural vocals" present from the opening. Toilet Ov Hell describes the album as a "protean and esoteric form of black/death metal, hearkening back to the ancient disfigurations of both genres while monstrous and new in its current iteration." The publication also notes the "brackish riffs and seasickened rhythms" that create a "watery, subsuming essence."  

The band themselves refer to their style as "Abyssal Death Metal," influenced by French and Polish black/death metal with a touch of US death metal, aiming to create a specific atmosphere both on recordings and live. Lyrical themes often revolve around the Abyss and Lovecraftian concepts.