Dark Star Burial – The Sacred Neurotic
Dark Star Burial – The Sacred Neurotic
Consouling Sounds
Release Date: 12/12/2025
Review by Metalphysicist
10/10
December is the month when all the reviewers are preparing thousands of ‘Best of the Year’ lists. But I decided to take some more new album releases from the vault, because usually the bands that deliver albums in December aren’t on those best of lists. And sometimes that is not fair at all!
Much to my surprise, I chose the new album from Dark Star Burial, “The Sacred Neurotic”, out now via Consouling Sounds and this is a great album. What is heard on “The Sacred Neurotic” are 9 songs in state of art mode. It sounded to me like the band/project is based on electronic layers and drum programming working to deliver to the songs a very pleasant background conduction, creating a kind of Harsh Industrial meets Progressive Rock compositions .
Everything on “The Sacred Neurotic” is carefully done, and the producing and mixing are something really special. At first, the album sounded to me as the work of one man who knows exactly what he wanted to highlight on each song and, on each song, the perfect resemblance of landscapes and switched tempos and exotic harmonies.
Reading the release, I found out that Dark Star Burial is a project of Napalm Death’s core-member, Shane Embury, along with Carl Stokes (Cancer, The Groundhogs, Current 93). Yes, you read it right. Dark Star Burial seems like fresh air music where Shane Embury takes a break from his main employment to just chill out for a while. It seemed fair enough to me, and in the process we are gifted with one of the best releases of 2025, in my opinion.
“The Sacred Neurotic” isn’t an album for Napalm Death fans, that is for sure. I dare to say that the average metallers aren’t even prepared for that kind of musical intercourse. The album opens with the enigmatic song ‘Cermunnos’ which has an amazing ambience, similar to bands like Oranssi Pazuzu. The song dynamics are prog-oriented and it sounds very accessible for non-Metal listeners, in a melodic sense. ‘Smother’ is based on a beautiful acoustic guitar melody, paced with programming acoustic layers and noisy and hypnotic samples. Maybe Toll would be jealous of what Shane Embury and Carl Stokes have achieved on that song.
‘Possessed by the Animus’ is an Electro Experimental track, which dialogues with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross soundtracks for motion pictures. Three minutes into a percussion loop and lots of noisy layers that sound unpleasant to the ears. ‘Light’ goes in the same creative line as the previous song. The Electro Progressive Rock is highlighted when the vocal lines are introduced and that reminded me of Pink Floyd songs, and the vocals are possibly inspired by David Gilmour meets Maynar James Keenan high on ethereal vocals. Very impressive, indeed.
‘Thanatos Smiles’ is a great song title which refers to Freud and Jungian psychological writings. Basically, Thanatos relates to our death puncture and Eros relates to life puncture, and we live in-between those two states of mind. By the way, Freud has an amazing academic paper analysing the relations between Thanatos and Eros to understand the variation of mental moods of our consciousness. It sounds like Shane Embury has a lot of unsolved issues to deal with, in an introspective sense. This is the average lyrics content persecuted on all of the songs. Concerning the musical side of ‘Thanatos Smiles’ this one is an epical piece of progressive construction and Middle Ages operatic choir with a beautiful and melodic guitar solo in the middle section. Dark Star Burial makes clear on ‘Thanatos Smiles’ that there are no boundaries for experimental music creation. No blast beats, no vociferating vocals, no Thrash Metal riffs – which are the main elements found on Napalm Death musical aesthetics.
On ‘Crocodile Snaps’ the sonority is switched to Dark Electro / Doom Metal mood while the vocal declaims a dense poetry which, even though It is hard to understand, the lyrics certainly aren’t about the beauty of living on Planet Earth. It sounds like an introspective kind of agony soul relief. ‘Sylvestris Deus’ keeps things as dark as fuck with a programming drum cut that functions as a mental loop surrounded by medieval singing cuts in a Black Metal vibe.
‘Living in Illusion’ is a Tribal Electro piece of experimental music, guided by simple synth melodies which worked very well with the percussion beats and sample layers everywhere. And “The Sacred Neurotic” closes the album with the song ‘Croesus’, getting back to the main songs’ conception, based on experimental electro elements, in a perfect composing structure.
Everything on “The Sacred Neurotic” has a proposal meaning which leaves no place for random songs or fillers to cover lazy empty spaces on the songs, which are completed with meaningful lyrics that each one of us may relate to. Dark Star Burial’s “The Sacred Neurotic” album is an excellent account of an artist on the run.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Cernunnos
02. Smother
03. Possessed By The Animus
04. Light
05. Thanatos Smiles
06. Crocodile Snaps
07. Sylvestris Deus
08. Living In Illusion
09. Croesus
LINKS:
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