How the many different worlds of experimentation in the vast landscape of metal continuously manage to stun and impress at a consistent rate is something that I will never truly understand, yet I dare not question it in the slightest. There are plenty of bands out there that dare to push the envelope far beyond what many of us would deem as reasonable or even sane reaches of what this already extreme sound is constantly capable of putting forth, and there are always a few names out there that are demanding to be heard for all they bring to the table. While many tend to think of Blut Aus Nord or Oranssi Pazuzu as the forefront for unorthodox black metal (and rightfully so), Sleepwalker has become quite the beast lurking in the shadows for that same exact brand of craziness. With this brand new offering, that fact is cemented more than ever before.
Even knowing just a little bit about what Sleepwalker has delivered in the past, it's clear that reality serves no bearing or meaning to anything that takes place when the international act takes center stage and delivers material with such potency and wild instrumentation that does naught but bewilder the listener. In just a 24-minute runtime, Sleepwalker has done it again with "Skopofoboexoskelett". Four tracks are all that adorn this piece, but it is in every second of them Sleepwalker weaves a dark reality that bends unpredictably and wildly without so much as a single hint for what comes next with it almost always seeming to be the least likely reality that takes place. Genres mean nothing when bathing in the vast writing darkness of "Skopofoboexoskelett" as we see black metal at the core, its viciously experimental tendencies allow us to see influence from the realms of jazz, noise rock, psychedelia, and even worldly instruments to immediately enable the album to take on a life and personality all its own with incredibly few albums in my experience able to be compared to what's been done here. And, really, that's the best kind of experimental black metal. It's never going to catch the attention or earn the respect of many purely because of how wild of an experience such works always are, but the ability to bring it all together in a form that is digestible albeit an incredibly foreboding prospect is something that only the best can deliver in such capacity like what we see here. If Sleepwalker hasn't proven themselves to be masters over their schizophrenic craft, then I don't know what to make of "Skopofoboexoskelett" even more so than I already didn't.
Creations like this are what the term "mind-bending" was all but made for. Sleepwalker has become a need-to-know name when it comes to anything related to utter craziness in the realms of black metal without so much as a moment spared in the band's conquest of what little sanity remains in the world. "Skopofoboexoskelett" is a testament to their power for all that it can be with the very existence of the piece enough to send the most astute screaming away, stark raving mad while the rest of us bow down before the visceral glory of what Sleepwalker has conjured.
"Skopofoboexoskelett" releases on September 4th via Sentient Ruin Laboratories!
LISTEN to an advanced track from "Skopofoboexoskelett" on Bandcamp here or via YouTube below.
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