Review: Sea Mosquito – Majestas

Style: experimental black metal, psychedelic black metal, dissonant black metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Oranssi Pazuzu, Blut Aus Nord, Ulcerate
Country: United Kingdom
Release date: 1 August 2025

A couple of my non-metal friends asked me the difference between black metal and death metal at dinner the other day, and I struggled to come up with a sufficient answer before finally deciding on “black metal focuses on atmosphere; death metal on bludgeoning.” It’s a drastic oversimplification, but how else would you describe the minutiae of extreme metal subgenres to people who would hear both as offensive noise? I was relatively proud of my off-the-cuff answer. British psychedelic black metal band Sea Mosquito certainly fit my miniature description of black metal as a wave of guitar, synth, and drums washes over the listener for forty-four minutes on Majestas. The record can be oppressively nightmarish, but without many distinct riffs, the atmosphere the group conjures is key to their success. 

The guitar parts function in the same manner as the synths—a background for the drums and rare lead guitars. From the swirly album opener “Organs Dissolved in Lacquer” to the dissonant closer “To Look upon Your Own Skeleton,” you are baptized in tremolo picking, awash in ambient synths. Occasionally, Sea Mosquito blesses the listener with a cleaner guitar tone, providing a lead above the murk like on “In Reverence of Pain.” Those moments with something more concrete to grab onto are godsends amidst the dark, hellish undercurrent. Beyond the guitars, the drums on Majestas are strong and dynamic. The drummer transitions between nice blast beats like on “In Reverence of Pain” to being the center focus like at 3:00 in “Organs Dissolved in Lacquer,” where he does monstrous cascading lines as if he provides the riff. While the rest of the band waffles about on their instruments, he carries Sea Mosquito’s inertia and rhythm—without him, Majestas has no movement.

Weirdly, Sea Mosquito leave the vocals drowning in the shadows while the acerbic highs would do well to create some clearer tension in their sound. When the vocals take center stage—the spoken harshes heralding the climax of “Ascension” and the spoken Arabic in the ghazal in “Ode to Wine” notably—are the moments when Majestas reaches its full potential. The lyrics, while difficult to parse except when vocalist Nuun switches into a more spoken register, are always interesting, contributing excellently to the cult-like atmosphere. My favorite track, “Ascension,” is elevated by its critique of postmodernism, with a crystal-clear uttering of “you will never feel the power of the sublime” leading into a bright, expansive, yet oppressive wall of sound as a climax. Many of the lyrics are inspired by Romanian religious scholar Mircea Eliade, and the literary slant is one of the album’s strongest assets in terms of atmosphere-crafting. 

But despite the many atmospheric strengths of Majestas, the emphasis on that aspect of their sound is the record’s downfall. Hardly a memorable moment is to be found in most of the tracks on the record, as it becomes an amorphous slog, more focused on textural style than songwriting substance. The album is nightmarish, psychedelic, and literary, yet the lack of sharp songwriting and forgettable riffs, while also mixing the vocals too low, is too much to overlook, leaving Sea Mosquito to be just another dissoblack album to add to the pile.

Recommended tracks: Ascension, In Reverence of Pain, Ode to Wine
You may also like: Decline of the I, The Great Old Ones, Haar, Omega Infinity, Noise Trail Immersion
Final verdict: 6/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives

Label: I, Voidhanger Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Sea Mosquito is:
– Nuun – Voice
– Fas – Spirit
– Akmonas – Soma