We’re proud to announce that the abysmal alchemists of lysergic black/death abominations Diabolic Oath are about to return with "Oracular Hexations", their most warped and devastating work to date.
The brand new sophomore full-length uncreation is slated for an early April 2024 release, and has been teased by Toilet Ov Hell via an avance track stream of the song “Winged Ouroboros Mutating Unto Gold”, with the iconic extreme metal blog stating that with the track “the listener is ripped out of the relative safety and comfort of the opening riff and sent through a dizzying assemblage of frightening, unhinged, enigmatic, and unconventional passages, each one stacking on the last to produce a tenuously towering and vertiginous effect”, and elaborating further that “once the original riff returns, the band has lost all patience with its straight-forwardness, instead opting for more malleability, mutating it into an almost unrecognizable version of itself.“ - you can check out the song and feature HERE.
On their new sophomore full-length uncreation "Oracular Hexations", Diabolic Oath’s staple approach of using completely fretless stringed instruments and a triple simultaneous vocal attack to depredate the listener's psyche, reaches truly majestic and catastrophic forms. Their technically daring and transformative approach to the usually dogmatic "war metal" craft has metastasized as a highly divergent and enigmatic mutation within the genre itself, where the crushing heaviness of the riffs concocted to their unconventional creation has resulted in an alternate reality of bestial black metal unbound with truly unseen and unthinkable auditory monstrosities. Shapeless, formless and free of any boundaries, the six lengthy spells contained within "Oracular Hexations" assume an almost globulous, chimeric form, appearing horrendous and misshapen to the listener as they morph and four-dimensionally sprawl like a sensorially annihilating mass devouring the psyche. The gnarled and grotesque nature of chords and musical structures created evoke a sense of disorienting and otherworldly disembodiment, becoming a fertile ground for degenerate forms of ritualism and esotericism that weave an unsettling conceptual canvas rife for the propagation of the absurd. Unbound with cryptic and abstruse mutterings about cosmological, multi-dimensional and impossible states of being, "Oracular Hexations" is an hallucinatory convergence between technical, crushing and flesh-scouring musical genius and truly grotesque forms of composition and storytelling. An indissoluble dualism between primeval destruction and inscrutable bewilderment which will test the psyche and flesh of those subjected to the album's surrealistic destructive force.
Diabolic Oath was begotten in Portland, Oregon in late 2017 by the will of The Temple and of Ominous Void. Almost immediately, Chthonic Conqueror was summoned to join, providing blasphemous vitriol and unholy thunderous percussion. The trio soon recorded the first offering, “MMXVIII”, and began the first incursions of unforgettably bleak and bludgeoning live rituals. Soon after, the band began writing new material which coalesced to become their mind-bending and flesh-battering first full-length album, “Profane Death Exodus” released in 2020 by Sentient Ruin. To make this album it was decided early on to implement the unique and unorthodox approach of fretless bass and guitar instruments combined with a triple vocal attack delivered by all members of the group, often simultaneously, to harness something unseen and unheard of before then in extreme metal, and completely ungovernable and unhinged. The band’s sound at this point began to flow as free-form sonic death ritual, beginning to assume abominable and experimental traits, and yielding an imposing sound drenched in lawlessness and chaos. Around the same time an anonymous, ritualistic approach to the live setting was adopted, incorporating in live performances meditations on death accompanied by obscure offerings, to further shape the creature’s essence in a realm of mysticism, chaos, and absurdity. The sound of Diabolic Oath is the culmination of a meticulous distillation of influences and styles ranging from black, death, and war metal to doom, and with certain influences (new and old) such as Teitanblood, Morbid Angel, and Bestial Warlust creeping into the mix alternating more pronounced references to more subtle ones. The band has worked tirelessly to carve its Diabolic path, playing shows to support high-caliber underground acts across the Pacific Northwest, Canada, and Mexico. With the debut full-length, “Profane Death Exodus”, the band was intuitively poised to conquer, destroy, and seal the oath, a feat accomplished which paved the way to the next generation of their wretched incantations, namely the cryptic and highly destructive 2022 MLP “Aischrolatreia” (also released on all formats by Sentient Ruin), but mostly, the sublimation of it all, Diabolic Oath’s new heirloom of unconquerable chaos: their immense 2024 sophomore full-length abomination Oracular Hexations.