Imagine if you took every Warhammer 40K miniature you ever painted to distract yourself from your ex, pureed them in a Magic Bullet with a stack of Scientific American back issues, and then asked a Morbid Angel session player to recite the resulting psychic goo as if he were auditioning to be the voice of the Large Hadron Collider. This was the impression I got from binging Azure Emote’s discography in an attempt to prepare myself for their new album, Cryptic Aura, that is due out July 25th.

At the nucleus of this swirling, phosphorescent horror is Mike Hrubovcak. A darling Philadelphia death metal vocalist you either already worship, or don’t because your standards are about as rigorous as the ones used to fill those “Best New Metal” playlists on Spotify. Mike is the sort of guy who does everything. He’s an illustrator whose artwork has defaced more metal albums than you impulse-bought at FYE circa 2004, and he’s an auteur-level composer convinced that extreme metal needs more space opera, more haunted laboratory samples, and a lot more theatrical panic attacks.

Azure Emote was obviously not designed for your casual Cannibal Corpse fan who thinks anything with a keyboard is “goth shit.” By the time they released Chronicles of an Aging Mammal in (2007), Azure Emote had already become the soundtrack to your most demented sci-fi melatonin dreams like reading Ray Kurzweil while getting punched in the throat by a hologram. But it was The Gravity of Impermanence (2013) that fully weaponized Hrubovcak’s sexy cosmic death howl.

Guest spots from dudes in Death, Fear Factory, and Tristania only confirmed that this was not a side project, it was a whole exploding reality. The follow-up, The Third Perspective, dropped right in the middle of the pandemic, because apparently it was felt that the world needed to consider, what if John Carpenter directed an Immolation video? Every album past is absolutely spectacular, hands down. 

Now this new album, Cryptic Aura, got dropped in my dungeon of reviews last night and the first song I clicked was track 6 titled “Provoking the Obscene.” I felt pre-emptively that maybe it would hit all of my melancholy nerves hard enough to induce a drugless acid trip, but upon entering I realized that I was very wrong, I would not be experiencing anything psychedelic, and felt I should start at the beginning and remain numerical until I understood the meaning of life again. 

Tracks 1 to 10 are the most intimidating arrangement of poetic guttural swelling and continued nuance combinations of jarring melodic detainment possible (anything I’ve remarked comparatively needs to be trashed immediately); including the reminder that any song with the word “Aeon” in it will include the most drool worthy sweeps. I still don’t know why that’s always the case, maybe one day someone will tell me.

My top three favorite tracks are: 3. Aeons Adrift (Again, drool worthy sweeps and orgasmic tempos to back up blissful schizophrenic poetry) 4.Bleed with The Moon (gave me a visual of the sky turning read and planes falling from the sky while the water rises and swallows half the country) 10. Writhing Lunacy (The track I will be blaring out my kitchen window all summer to piss off the dipshits across the street who think they can knock on my door and ask me for shit)

This album is flawless; it takes the trophy for coercive, unapologetic, symphonic inquisition, and each time you listen, something new pops out. I also highly recommend you jump down the rabbit hole of Mike’s creations because he is a modest genius. 

You can check out more from the band here: 

https://azureemote.bandcamp.com/album/cryptic-aura-2

https://www.facebook.com/azureemote/

Azure Emote’s Cryptic Aura arrives on July 25th. Pre-order the album here.

Jordeana Bell

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