Extol release Aura of Decay tomorrow, 6 November, through Solid State Records. It is their first album in thirteen years.
Eleven songs, from The One and the Many through Merciless Hunger and Wrecked Within Walls to End of Times. The length is the first surprise: a band returning after this long usually sends out something short and careful, and this is a full record of new writing.
Extol spent the 1990s and 2000s being the Norwegian band that did not fit, playing progressive death metal with technical writing at a time when the country's export was black metal, and doing it from inside a Christian scene that neither side wanted to claim.
They stopped in 2013 and said they were making another one this year. Tomorrow it exists. Solid State, who released the first Extol records in the late 1990s, are putting this one out too, which closes a circle few bands of that era get to close.