Diabolic Oath – Oracular Hexations
Release Date: 5th April 2024
Label: Sentient Ruin
Bandcamp
Genre: Blackened Death Metal, War Metal, Bestial Black Metal, Extreme Metal, Doom, Death Metal.
FFO: Bestial Warlust, Archgoat, Antediluvian.
Review By: Rick Farley
First things first, this is about as ridiculously heavy, horrifyingly ferocious, and gross sounding as a band can possibly get. Diabolic Oath, hailing from Portland, Oregon is back with their most warped and devastating work to date. The bands sophomore full length Oracular Hexations releasing on April 5th, 2024, is the equivalent of a blackened death metal wrecking ball traveling through otherworldly realms to smash your face in. Using completely fretless stringed instruments (guitars and bass) and a triple vocal attack that is nothing short of gut-churning, Diabolic Oath’s heinous version of chasm smashing extreme metal is utterly vile and will unquestionably cause violent outbursts of severe aggression and gleeful joy. Kind of like when an Axe murderer hacks up someone into pieces. It’s pretty evil and brutal, but god-damn is it fun. So, I’ve heard.
Oracular Hexations, despite wreaking complete havoc for the entirety of the record’s 36 minutes, is remarkably atmospheric in a spectral sort of way and, dare I say, “gasp” catchy. Let us not get this mixed up though, this is gnarly, hideous death metal, blackened to the roots with bizarre textures, disjointing tempos, and slithery shapeless riff patterns. Motion sickness with distortion, if you will. It sounds like a hellish creature crawling out from the underworld with broken limbs. However, as jagged as everything is, it still feels completely coherent and listenable. If that even makes sense. I will say this, it did take me a couple listens before I could totally fathom the ugliness I was hearing.
The fretless bass and guitars create a serpentine quality that is nearly free-form and on the verge of being out of tune and completely off the rails, but never actually is. Think the buzzing guitars of Dismember, the uniqueness of Morbid Angel’s rhythmic structures and the pure black metal menace of early Mayhem with a doomy, cosmic tinged atmosphere and a total lack of regard for your auditory comfort. Tremolo chainsaw riffs, snake like basslines, grim aura’s, dissonant textures, and savage gutturals, all battling for supremacy within the context of percussion that is on the verge of utter chaos. This is glorious.
Rusted Madness Tethering Misbegotten Haruspices immediately tears at your flesh with its war metal intensity. A little less than a minute in, a face melting hook that accents the fretless guitars in a warped way slices at your throat. Bellowing gutturals over doomy guitars gives way to a wickedly disturbing solo. More chaos ensues, and we are sonically guided towards the end with a world-shaking groove that will potentially harm you. Winged Ouroboros Mutating Unto Gold with its purposeful Swedish death metal chug, mutated fretless riffs and searing tremolo picking, it sounds like the abyss is about to swallow you up. Diabolic Oath does a hell of a job of scarring you over and over and commanding you to keep coming back for more.
For the initiated, Oracular Hexations is everything you want it to be. Just completely colossal, blackened death metal with dense, cavernous atmosphere. It sounds filthy in the best way possible. Grimy, noisy, and twisted, the production being quite good, still is raw and attacking.
For those that are newer to this type of metal nastiness, this may or may not be for you, but if it does get its merciless hooks in, you will be changed forever. For as gnarled as this record sounds, this is well-thought-out, well executed devastation. Mere words cannot quite explain the level of grotesquely beautiful, otherworldly swirling rage shown on Oracular Hexations. An absolute must-listen for anyone with a dysfunctional need for this type of noise terror. 
(4.5 / 5)
