Stahlsarg’s name translates as ‘steel coffin’, a grim reference to the submarines sunk during WW2 and an apt allusion to the deeply war-inspired lyrics of their music. The group released their debut Comrades in Death on Mighty Music (Vulcano, Panzerchrist) in 2015, and two years later followed this up with Mechanisms of Misanthropy, issued on Non Serviam Records (Pantheon I, Wormwood).

Endorsed by the likes of Mayhem’s Hellhammer, the band performed alongside international black metal artists such as Sarkom and Endstille and appeared at respected festivals including Inferno in Norway and Kings of Black Metal in Germany. The band spent much of the late 2010s on tour, the result being a prolonged hiatus from recording.

Now the band return with mini-album Suicide of God, their first studio release in over half a decade. It boasts the strongest material by the band to date, cleverly weaving slower melancholy-soaked atmospheric passages with frantic riffing and frenzied blasting, new vocalist John Hirst adding a highly effective Gorgoroth-esque snarl to proceedings.

Boasting a powerful and gritty Russ Russell production (Memoriam, Samael, Vallenfyre) the songwriting is potent, with highly memorable guitar work and slow-building tension, not least in the 8-minute epic ‘Darkness, My Accomplice’. There are nods to the likes of Marduk, early Mayhem and Endstille as well as hints of Bolt Thrower’s embittered intensity, and haunting touches of early Christian Death, a nod perhaps to the founding member’s involvement with the band.