Ophis have put a date on Encased In Deathlike Layers. It arrives on 27 November through FDA Records, and when the first song appeared last week no date had been given.
Six titles, running a little over an hour: "The Hounds Are Wailing", "The Astral Tomb", "Mundus Leprosus", "Count Your Blessings", "Sore" and "A Silent Culling". Ten minutes each on average, which is the arithmetic this style asks for and most bands no longer deliver.
It follows Spew Forth Odium from 2021. Pre orders are open in several formats.
Two concerts sit around the release. A warm up on 6 November at the s.v. Jugendhaus Ost in Wolfsburg, then the release party on 21 November at Bambi Galore in Hamburg, where the band have been based since the start. A youth centre and a small club is the right scale for German death doom, and it is where the music has always been played.
The titles, read in order, do what the album titles of this band usually do. Nothing in them suggests anybody is having a better time than last time.