Strigiform – Aconite
Release Date: 14th November 2025
Label: I, Voidhanger
Bandcamp
Genre: Avant-Garde Blackened Death Metal.
FFO: Haunter, Suffering Hour, Imperial Triumphant, Devenial Verdict, Thanatorean, Panzerfaust, Antiquus Infestus.
Review By: Malte Brigge
I was 100% convinced the name Strigiform was about vampires (strigoi), and it made sense given how thick with grave dirt their debut album, Aconite, is, but today I learned that strigiformes are an order of birds of prey that’s mostly owls. While I was at it, I looked up ‘aconite’ and discovered it’s a genus of plants that are mostly extremely toxic. I don’t know how much you need to be a biologist to appreciate Italy’s Strigiform, or how much I’ve missed in their music not knowing these things while listening (there are quite a few mentions of poison in the lyrics), but the least I can do is make sure you go in knowing you’re dealing with something highly poisonous with terrifying talons (seriously, some owls can take your scalp right off your head if they want to).
Aconite’s opening riffs hit like a bag of sledgehammers straight to the face. Think how heavy a sledgehammer head is; that’s the guitar tone, as thick as a bulldozer plowing its way through a mountain. I sometimes just play Adamant’s opening attack repeatedly because there’s nothing else quite like it, but if you’ve listened to much Délirant or Black Curse, you’ll get a sense of what you’re in for. Tie a palpable low-end bass tone crawling around the songs to a percussion sound, so crunchy cymbal crashes are almost inaudible, then, regardless of anything else, you’ve got an album that sounds like it was forged in a haunted mineshaft with malice and disorder its sole intent.
Beyond production, the songwriting itself has a dynamic, alien atmosphere that makes it hard to tell where things begin and end. More than once you get dropped out of nowhere into a sensory deprivation chamber (Adamant, Prismatic Delirium) and lose all sense of direction as songs slither in and out of wormholes. Knell of Nethermost Withdrawal sounds like a sludgy sea on a distant planet, with a piano part just shy of pretty but deliciously discordant. Hypnagogic Allure bursts out of some poor soul’s chest before falling into a super thick bass doodle and drums that land so heavily you’re not sure how they could ever be lifted again. Vocals slobbery, ravenous and covered in gore arise as if angry you interrupted their meal, but are surprisingly sparse throughout the album. Clearly there’s an emphasis on letting the music do the work, but when N makes an appearance, his deep, dark and occasionally fierce (Scorched and Hostile) voice gives shape to the chaos.
Like the many bands Strigiform is composed of, Aconite is full of surprises. Sudden atmospheric drops, unexpected guitar solos that sound like thick-bladed, grit-filled saws (Hypnagogic Allure [stunningly performed by producer Gabriele Gramaglia], Obsecration), and jumpscares (Knell of the Nethermost Withdrawal) keep you constantly on alert. Instruments often feel like they’re being played in different rooms with no awareness of each other (Obsecration), as if looking for something lost in the dark, then unexpectedly come together into a stunning groove (Hypnagogic Allure). What doesn’t happen, as much as what does, makes this a compelling record: there’s nearly no blast beats, yet it never feels mid-paced; guitars rarely use tremolo but play just slightly out of pace from each other; it’s hard to find a central focus, yet it doesn’t meander. Normally an absence of focus would be my strictest criticism, but that’s largely what makes this album work, in the way that swarms work: microindications of communication sweep from spider to spider until they change direction as if one, yet each is still intent on their individual path.
I’m perfectly aware spiders don’t (or shouldn’t, for the love of all that is holy and unholy alike) swarm, but listening to this album before going to sleep one night gave me spider swarm nightmares, and I pass such sweet dreams on to you. Aconite is a monstrous anglerfish hunting in the cosmos, alluring with its sound, hypnotic in the way it refuses clarity, and dangerous to your mortal health. It can be hard to make sense of Strigiform as they draw on the otherworldly eeriness of Vertebra Atlantis, the vicious attack and seething hatred of Thirst Prayer and multilayered, complex atmosphere of Afraid of Destiny. The results feel like a deranged David Lynch character dancing on top of a volcano—creepy in places, weird in others, yet elsewhere destructive. Aconite is thirty-four minutes of deeply charred death metal that feeds on your attention and twists it to its own whims until only madness remains.
(4 / 5)
