photos by Alvino Salcedo
Blackened death metal power-trio SUFFERING HOUR has completed work on their most-realized, second album, The Cyclic Reckoning, now confirmed to be released through Profound Lore Records in February 2021. With the album’s cover art, track listing, and other details, the label has issued an advance stream of the lead track, “Strongholds Of Awakening.”
SUFFERING HOUR is a blackened death metal band from Forest Lake, Minnesota. Forming under a different name as a tech-thrash band in 2010, the band carried their sense of manic chaos and old-school structure into the world of cosmic black death. Their unique sound garnered high acclaim with their 2017 debut record In Passing Ascension, a guitar-driven slab of nihilistic savagery. This sound was then further explored on their 2019 EP Dwell, a single eighteen-minute track proving their unrelenting songwriting prowess. The band has since played numerous shows and fests across the globe, most notably Maryland Deathfest, Covenant Montreal/Vancouver, and Killtown Deathfest, plus a European tour with Malthusian and a US run with Sinmara.
At forty-five minutes in length spanning five songs, The Cyclic Reckoning showcases the band firing on all cylinders. The music on this album is more representative of SUFFERING HOUR as a whole than it ever was on past material, with every member making their presence more known than ever. This record also features the band sacrificing some of their technicality and chaos in favor of more atmospheric passages, as the band envisioned this record to be an unhindered display of negative emotion, seething or sombre. Based around themes of awakening, obsessions, and mental anguish, this is a natural continuation of everything that encompasses the band’s ideas on life, death and beyond. This is SUFFERING HOUR at their most honest and fierce.
Produced, mixed, and mastered by the band themselves, The Cyclic Reckoning features cover artwork by Artem Grigoryev and additional art by Timothy Greico, Lucas Ruggieri, and Cold Poison.
Hear SUFFERING HOUR’s “Strongholds Of Awakening” now at THIS LOCATION.
Profound Lore will release The Cyclic Reckoning on CD, LP, and through all digital providers on February 19th. Watch for preorders to post in early January alongside additional audio previews of the album.
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The Cyclic Reckoning Track Listing:
1. Strongholds Of Awakening
2. Transcending Antecedent Visions
3. The Abrasive Black Dust II
4. Obscuration
5. The Foundations Of Servitude
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