Wait… what the fuck? What the actual fuck is this? A Sludge Metal concept album that comes with its own novella? That sentence alone should send most people running for the hills, clutching their Electric Wizard records and muttering something about “pretentious bollocks.” And yet here we are, and not only is Astralis by Azell good — it’s fucking amazing.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t see this one coming. I like Sludge Metal as much as the next guy who occasionally wants his eardrums pummelled into a fine paste. I’ve got my go-to bands, my reliable gut-punches of filth and fuzz that I return to when I want to feel like I’m drowning in a tar pit. But Astralis? This is something else entirely. This is a full-bodied, bone-crushing, concept-driven experience that breaks every rule of Sludge and then grinds the shattered remains into dust.
From the moment it begins with opening track From the Womb of Oblivion, this thing moves. Not quickly, mind you — no, Azell operate on a scale that feels tectonic. The riffs don’t hit you so much as they descend upon you, like mountains collapsing in slow motion. Each chord lands with the weight of a dying star, each drumbeat is a hammer strike straight to the ribcage. The production is enormous — warm, dense, and utterly suffocating — but still manages to find room for texture and nuance. You can actually feel the air between the instruments, like standing in a sealed room while the walls close in around you.
What makes Astralis even more compelling, though, is the vocal interplay between Courtney and David Napier. Dual vocals can often feel like a gimmick, but here it’s pure fucking alchemy. Courtney’s tortured, throat-shredding howls crash headlong into David’s abyssal, bowel-churning growls — two distinct voices locked in an existential death spiral. The contrast gives the record a kind of emotional dynamism you rarely find in Sludge Metal. It’s not just rage and despair on loop; it’s a dialogue between damnation and deliverance, between agony and acceptance.
And it fits, because Astralis isn’t just heavy — it’s narrative. You can tell every riff and vocal line has been built to serve a story, and that story isn’t some vague “we’re angry at society” bullshit. This is cosmic. It’s introspective. It’s human collapse viewed through the lens of mythology and madness. The accompanying novella fleshes this out further, giving context to the album’s descent into darkness, but even without it, the music tells its own tale. You feel the journey — from the crushing opening passages to the apocalyptic crescendos that close it all down.
What sets Azell apart from the usual swamp-dwelling Sludge brigade is how much finesse there is behind the filth. Sure, it’s ugly and abrasive as all hell, but there’s also an almost progressive sensibility at play here. Songs twist and evolve, breaking out of their grooves just when you think you’ve got them figured out, yet it never feels disjointed — it feels like part of a grander design.
It’s that rare Sludge record that manages to be both intelligent and vicious. The kind that makes you stop headbanging long enough to think, “holy shit, this actually means something.” It’s an album that doesn’t just beat you into submission — it makes you listen.
By the time the final track Time Slows to Nothing fades, you’re left sitting there in stunned silence, not entirely sure what the hell just happened but absolutely certain it was something special. Astralis is one of those records that lingers — in your ears, in your chest, in that part of your brain that refuses to shut up long after the music’s stopped. It’s Sludge, yes — but it’s Sludge transcendent.
So yeah, consider me converted. Azell have taken a genre often content to wallow in its own grime and turned it into something grand, something mythic, something utterly and beautifully devastating.
Astralis by Azell is out on October 17th via Rottweiler Records.
CHOICE CUT: Monolithic Terror
BLACK METAL ARCHIVES VERDICT: Astralis is a crushing, soul-devouring odyssey that rewrites the rules of Sludge. Intelligent, unrelenting, and goddamn monumental. Azell don’t just play heavy — they are heavy.
PRESS SOURCE: Imperative PR.
