The work of one Formless, SAPIENTIA DIABOLI are an American black metal band who’ve unleashed a steady stream of short-length recordings since their formation in 2021. They’ve worked with such cult labels as Ixiol Productions and Snow Wolf Records, and now make a blood pact with RABAUW for their first full-length. Tellingly titled I Ov the Darkness, SAPIENTIA DIABOLI’s debut album is a violent vortex of malodorous mysticism and teeth-gnashing tension. At times, its slipstreaming surge is suffocating beyond belief – riffs slash and swirl from literally every direction, with the forward propulsion pushing that oppression to feverish levels – but just as often does the serpentine songwriting impact a paradoxically ethereal effect. Astute listeners will be cognizant of such a disconnect from the esteemed likes of Nightbringer, Hetroertzen, and progenitors Thorns, but SAPIENTA DIABOLI’s exercise of such here takes on a stranger aspect: cruelly mechanized and impossibly organic in equal measure, a searing symbiosis of cold, dead matter and human, all too fucking human. In that sense, we can also draw parallels to unorthodox outliers like Troll’s Neo-Satanic Supremacy or the cult Tsatthogua – but whatever manner you approach SAPIENTIA DIABOLI, I Ov the Darkness remains a stultifying work and an imposing springboard for the band’s next recordings.
