Sulphur English is a tempest. The unrelenting intensity of Inter Arma’s fourth album is common in metal, but its monolithic power is striking for a band long defined by its dynamics. On its previous three full-lengths, the Richmond quintet has tested a theory that the apocalypse would sound more real if it invoked the totality of the landscape: lush gardens of British folk in one corner, the winding roads of Southern rock stretching out in the distance, the wide open skies of prog above. This ability to shapeshift has yielded a catalog that feels vast but interconnected: different topographies along the same map.
On Sulphur English, with little territory left to cover, Inter Arma set fire to it all. The riffs are pummeling and dissonant, as if melting and losing shape in real time. The songwriting operates on a principle of tension and repetition. Less melodic and more aggressive than anything they’ve recorded, it’s a test of endurance through which the band seems to grow more focused with each passing minute. Yet these songs do not simply suggest Inter Arma’s dark unburdening, their primal howl after a series of masterfully composed opuses. Instead, they spiral with the patience and precision of some dismal symphony. With Sulphur English, Inter Arma expose the nightmare world that’s lingered below the surface of all their previous work.
Vocalist Mike Paparo has discussed using these songs to address his struggles with depression, and the record itself is dedicated to two of the band’s colleagues who died in recent years: Bill Bumgardner of Lord Mantis and Indian, for whom the ominous opening track is named, and Adrian Guerra of Bell Witch, whose mournful doom metal echoes through the album’s quieter moments. Its darkness feels personal, lived-in. The bluesy and exquisite “Stillness” and the funeral march of “Blood on the Lupines” touch on the classic-rock-influenced ballads from 2016’s Paradise Gallows; but where those songs were defined by their sweeping momentum, these seem to burrow deeper into themselves, unwilling to transcend.
In the absence of the band’s boundless experimentation, the heavier songs adhere to a traceable lineage of atmospheric death metal. In “Citadel,” drummer T.J. Childers—who has long been Inter Arma’s most versatile member—alternates between plodding fills and ghastly blast beats. It sounds like a sudden free fall rendered in slow motion. The album’s best moments find similar inspiration in their descent. The closing title track repeatedly collapses into slow, claustrophobic breakdowns, like a traffic jam in hell, before imploding in chaos, courtesy of guitarists Steven Russell and Trey Dalton.
From the beginning, Inter Arma have been interested in grand statements: Their songs are complicated and their albums are long, and their ambition sometimes seems limited to the sprawling tone shifts in their material. So while Sulphur English is their least welcoming album, it is also their most rewarding. Standout tracks like “The Atavist’s Meridian” and the gothic, percussive “Howling Lands” indicate a band able to capture its passing moods—helplessness, rage, devotion—and shape them into something whole, merciless yet refined. With Sulphur English, they’ve delivered a cohesive vision of internal destruction, all the more explosive for everything they’ve left behind.
