Review by Nathan on May 13, 2026.

When a band has as expansive and diverse a sound as Abyssal, it can be hard to break new ground by the fourth full-length. At this point, I think everyone knows what they’re getting with the band ever since Denouement exploded onto the scene back in 2011. One of those one-man projects whose musicianship and vision is too strong to ignore, they immediately captivated a small segment of the metal fanbase with their obscure, artsy extremities and haven’t looked back since. Musically, there aren’t a lot of changes on A Beacon In The Husk and it uses the same kinds of subtle melodic stylings and suffocating doom passages as previous albums did. They’ve had their sound for a good 10 years now, no upheaval necessary. Churning, hypnotic black metal with a thick, dreadful tone, sometimes overwhelming with its tremolo and dissonance, that uses sparse, cavernous doom passages to break things up is the order of the day, but with each new album, it seems like Abyssal evolves even more.

What stands out on Abyssal’s 2019 album, much more so than before, is the attention to detail all around. This is most evident in the lyrics. Where they were still rather erudite and verbose before, their lyrics were standard for death metal, but "A Beacon In The Husk" has this incredibly detailed deconstruction of our humanity’s struggles for purpose and meaning, ruminates on our portrayal of objectivity as something divine and there’s a bunch of other concepts explored in the lyrics that I need to go over my old philosophy textbooks in order to be able to fully explain. The risk for pretension is high, but there’s enough emotion present in the storytelling to make it feel real. Whether or not the lyrical topic is one that resonates with you, it is pretty impressive how detailed and sophisticated the lyrics are and how they seem like they were meant to mirror the progression of the album itself. The way there are little bends in intensity, the long, sparse, creepy passages that morph into blistering, Portalesque sections, all of it seems to reflect the morbidly bizarre turns the story in the booklet takes.

To my knowledge, Abyssal hasn’t done a concept album before (or at least they haven’t displayed the songs obviously as such), but they’re the perfect band to execute such a thing. Their sprawling, multi-genre-encompassing style always seemed a bit too ambitious for the standard “collection of songs” album format. With their older albums, I often find myself listening more to one or two of my favorite songs off them in bits and pieces, but A Beacon in the Husk is a pointless listen if you’re going 1-2 tracks at a time. The minimal, transitory nature of some of the songs necessitates a full, front-to-back listening experience. Although there are songs like “Dialogue” and “Discernnment: The Cloister Beneath the Grime” that are shorter and could theoretically be consumed in bite-sized pieces, those songs are much more effective when surrounded by the hypnotic rhythms and slowly encroaching atmospheres of “Khyphotic Suzerains” and “A Beacon in the Husk”. This is truly the type of album that’s greater than the sum of its parts, and you can get enjoyment out of this just by marveling at how everything is put together. Like the album cover, it’s somewhat unusual and complex, but there’s a creepy beauty and ridiculous detail within the architecture. Additionally impressive is how closely the album cover reflects the feel of the music. I'd like to say this feels a little bit...darker than previous works, but that's a hard thing to quantify - it mostly just sounds really, really dense, packed with layers I'm probably not even fully noticing.

Really, that’s the most impressive thing about A Beacon in the Husk – whether you realize it or not, everything is exactly where it is supposed to be. It’s not even entirely a musical thing, and it’s hard to describe in a straightforward manner, but everything up from the vocal stylings to the progression of the songs to the album cover to the lyrical themes is perfectly in its place. It’s hard for me to even give this a rating because even after giving A Beacon in the Husk a good amount of time to digest, I still can’t fully comprehend it, and more gets revealed to me with every new spin. Highly recommended, but make sure you listen to it at least a few times.

Rating: 8.7 out of 10