Today, Purity Through Fire announces December 23rd as the international release date for the highly anticipated eighth album of Greece’s Sad, Black Metal Craft, on CD, A5 digipack, and vinyl LP formats.
Since 2005, Greece’s Sad have been a madly prolific bastion of pure ‘n’ cold black metal. Their canon is vast and varied – VERY relatively so, given that this is all-caps BLACK METAL after all – with the longstanding duo of instrumentalist Ungod and vocalist Nadir exploring the darkest corridors of their souls every step of the way. They’ve did so across a half-dozen albums for such esteemed labels as Drakkar, Obscure Abhorrence, and Old Temple among others as well as a dozen splits, but then joined forces with Purity Through Fire in 2020 for the release of their seventh album, Misty Breath of Ancient Forests.
Indeed, that album was aptly titled, for it saw Sad delivering their most ancient work in many moons. But the Greek duo are ever surprising, and nearly four years later do they emerge from the shadows with the fully-fuck-off Black Metal Craft. It’s no accident that the album is titled such, as it reasserts the purity at the very heart of the Sad aesthetic and strips it to the fucking bone with ghoulish violence. Raw and rippling, here Sad somehow inject the melancholic melodicism of its Misty predecessor and then stir the maelstrom to a swirling boil, remaining hypnotic and locked-in whilst managing to gallop forth from time to time in a manner most regal. Put another way, Black Metal Craft could serve as a love letter to the late ’90s heyday of Sombre Records or the aforementioned Drakkar, so old & cold its aesthetic (and, again, unapologetic its title). Purity Through Fire is thus the most fitting stronghold for Sad‘s eternal black metal craft!
In the meantime, hear the brand-new title track “Black Metal Craft” here:
Cover and tracklisting are as follows:
Tracklisting for Sad (Greece)’s Black Metal Craft
1. Black Metal Craft
2. Crimson Haze
3. Believe In Evil
4. Catacombs Of Thoughts
5. Sickening Euphoria
6. The Fortune Teller
7. Blissful Horizon
8. Winds of Grief