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ORDEALS set release date for ETERNAL DEATH debut album, reveal first track

Today, Eternal Death announces September 26th as the international release date for Ordeals‘ long-awaited debut album, Third Rail Prayer, on CD and vinyl LP formats. 

Formed in 2011, Ordeals are a black / death trio hailing from New York City. What the band lacks in prolificness, they more than ably exceed in quality of craftsmanship. To date, the band released three short-lengths – the Apotheosis EP in 2016, a split with Daethorn in 2018, and the Choose Death EP in 2019 – hinting at the mastery to come across a full-length.

At least here, Ordeals‘ debut album bears the ominous title Third Rail Prayer. And such an askew title suits their sound like an iron fist lined with velvet: subterranean, disease-ridden black / death METAL that prominently displays a multitude of unique twists. For sure, Ordeals are mangled and gnarly at every turn, suggesting some of the rougher and rowdier cults from the old Australian scene, and yet there’s a quiet grandiosity to that sound. Emotion-rich melodies blaze with sulfurous fury, instilling visions of purple-black melodic black / death from ancient times. But the band’s songwriting is anything but straightforward; often beginning or especially ending in angular shapes, that fury bubbles over into bent & broken delirium, and Third Rail Prayer thus becomes something of a fight for survival. Still, there’s order within Ordeals‘ chaos, and the trio expertly allow a sense of dark, dread-inducing space to creep in, simmering the tension to a boil before head-caving crush comes: a spiraling descent into madness without resistance. Zealous Hellspell’s full-throated roars & strangulations illustrate this sonic hysteria with utterly blanching effect.

We are at end-times, and Ordeals yield to this inevitability; Third Rail Prayer is not so much the soundtrack to such as simply three men’s smokestack souls made manifest. To coincide with this long-awaited album’s arrival, Ordeals will be playing the Covenant fest the weekend of release.

In the meantime, hear the brand-new title track “Third Rail Prayer” HERE at Eternal Death‘s Bandcamp, where the album can also be preordered. Cover and tracklisting are as follows:

Tracklisting for Ordeals’ Third Rail Prayer
1. Third Rail Prayer
2. Throes
3. Compulsion
4. Emerge
5. Scorn Ceremony
6. Aequanimitas
7. Suffer Cursed Ordeals
8. Triumph

MORE INFO:
www.facebook.com/OrdealsAscendant 
ordealsascendant.bandcamp.com 

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