Sabbath Assembly – Quaternity (2014)

The weirdest band in the planet has finally returned with an even weirder release with “Quaternity”. Sabbath Assembly has been focusing since its inception to re-interpret the hymns of The Process Church of the Final Judgment, and with this release they take things further into darker corners with a bit of a shift from the more Psychedelic/distorted guitars oriented music to a more rudimentary and bone chilling musical deconstruction.

After the chilling intro “Let Us Who Mystically Represent...”, Jamie Myers (vocals) and Dave Nuss (drums) return with a more elaborate and expansive sound combining minimalistic percussions and string instruments on “Jehovah on Death”. The music in this release, in its majority, is all new and original from the band with just a lyrical inspiration of the Process Church’s vast weirdness.

One of the best tracks in this release comes early with the haunting “The Burning Cross of Christ”, featuring excellent vocal arrangements and penetrating acoustic guitars. Sabbath Assembly, for the most part, now sounds like a mixture of bands like Neun Welten, Empyrium, Tenhi combined with Jamie’s vocals, and this is a great thing. We are quite content with how the band has been evolving over time, and their music is 100 times darker and more disturbing now than ever.

For the people that worship powerful guitar riffs, “I, Satan” is a track that will satisfy these needs while incorporating some extra harsh vocals and very eerie vocal arrangements. Featuring former Processian Anthony D’Andrea, “Lucifer” has a very ritualistic and hypnotic nature that will grab you since the first few seconds and will drown you deeper in the band’s unique lyrical context. The album closes with the monolithic “The Four Horsemen”, an 18-minute track that morphs in very different shapes ranging from Folk to Spoken word passages as some lush string instrumentation.

Overall, “Quaternity” is a truly unique release that is creepy in the true Sabbath Assembly way. Having been lucky enough to see the band twice in two very different settings (Roadburn and Stella Natura), we are certainly looking forward to hearing these tracks in a live setting. If you like the band’s unique lyrical context and their highly creative way of portraying the church’s hymns and ideology, this release will not disappoint you.

Label: Svart Records

Release: March 28th, 2014

Genre: Neo-folk / Psychedelic

Country: USA