Temple Nightside have put Cenotaph Severance up in full, ahead of the physical release.
Eight tracks, opening with Seething Dissolve and closing on Fossilised Entombment, and the titles alone tell you the subject has not moved in sixteen years. The label describes it as taking the tighter execution of Pillars of Damnation and putting it back inside the enormous reverberating space the band have always worked in.
The more interesting claim is where they say it reaches back to: Prophecies of Malevolence, the 2011 demo, and the bestial quality of the earliest recordings. That is a long way behind the last two albums, and if the record really does sit there it is a deliberate undoing of a decade of refinement.
IV founded the project in 2010 and called it ritualistic death metal necromancy, which sounded like a joke and then turned out to be an accurate description. Condemnation came in 2013, The Hecatomb in 2016, and the band have played live rarely ever since.