Style: cavernous death metal, symphonic death metal, experimental death metal (mixed vocals, mostly harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Immolation, Teitanblood, Fleshgod Apocalypse, Stravinsky
Country: United Kingdom
Release date: 7 November 2025

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Not often do bands come along and unquestionably perfect a style of music, making other band’s efforts in the style practically futile. Even rarer does this happen decades after their genre’s inception, yet the metal world has seen it happen thrice in the past few years: Vektor’s Terminal Redux for progressive thrash metal, Ad Nauseam’s Imperative Imperceptible Impulse for dissonant death metal, and now, Qrixkuor’s The Womb of the World for cavernous death metal. 

For those unfamiliar, reverb-drenched and vile, cavernous death metal’s best practitioners craft mammoth, atmospheric soundscapes with murky riffs coated in chromatic dissonance. The style is immersive and makes the listener feel like they’re swimming through tar. The Womb of the World works in this mode, certainly: riffs are more the swirling hum of a buzzsaw working in melodic and rhythmic contours or serpentine sliding across the fretboard rather than precisely defined notes for headbanging. The record also is caked in palpable existential dread, thick as smog, a warped spirituality seeping through your body’s orifices.

The Womb of the World isn’t just phenomenally composed and performed within its style—it’s paradigm-shifting entirely. For thirty-two years, cavernous death metal has been Incantation worship, with some acts incorporating war metal’s aesthetic of brutality—aggressive, bass-heavy, blackened, and chaotic. The Womb of the World brings Modernism into the mix aesthetically and compositionally, with full, lush orchestration courtesy of The Orchestra of the Silent Stars, as well as an operatic soprano working her haunting magic throughout calmer sections. The orchestration is perfect for the style and not overbearing, adding the varied and essential textures of boastful horns and ominous strings. Above the leaden din, Qrixkuor’s guitarist, D, slings one chromatic solo after another, chaotic yet organized with the utmost precision of the Serialists; the classical instruments are challenged to follow suit. The manic piano solo at the start of “Slithering Serendipity” is among the highlights of the album, as are the various tumbling violin leads. 

With only four tracks, three of which cross the twelve minute mark, The Womb of the World’s songwriting and pacing feel completely inscrutable at first, but the record blossomed into a brilliant masterclass of composition as I gave it more time to marinate. The apocalyptic trumpet and unhinged guitar solo opening “So Spoke the Silent Stars” perfectly set the tone for the emotional and sonic destruction to come. A track like “Slithering Serendipity” covers so much ground it may as well be recounting the rise and fall of empires or the history of the universe. The eight-minute gem “And You Shall Know Perdition as Your Shrine…” utilizes the voice of Jaded Lungs (Adorior) as her whispered vocals and eerie screams grow from a single thread in an isolated classical section into a glossolalic cacophony of voices atop chaotic, noisy death metal over the course of the last five minutes. The clear crescendo is the closest Qrixkuor get to standard songwriting, and it’s an essential break before the monstrous eponymous finale, still as unparseably epic as on my first listen, yet as suffocating and sublime as any music this year—or ever. 

Truly the only thing holding Qrixkuor back is the cavernous style, as the band occasionally veers into a riff that’s too amorphous and would better be suited as something a bit meatier in tone and clearer in the production, but that’s a stylistic quirk more than a flaw of their own. The harsh vocals are also fairly plain but serviceable.

Most incredible about the Womb of the World is Qrixkuor’s ability to blend oppressive death metal with orchestration on par with Aquilus and Wilderun for best in metal. It is an apotheosis of style, taking the best of their contemporaries and forebears and making it more sophisticated compositionally and performance-wise. The record plays with the human psyche itself. Qrixkuor’s debut LP Poison Palinopsia and follow-up EP Zoetrope indicated that the band had the potential to transcend mere death metal, but they’ve exceeded all expectations. It’s time for cavernous death metal to close shop. It has been completed.

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Recommended tracks: Slithering Serendipity, The Womb of the World
You may also like: Hasard, Cthe’illist, Portal, Abyssal, Ad Nauseam, Worm
Final verdict: 9/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Dark Descent Records

Qrixkuor is:
– S (Guitars, bass, and vocals)
– D (Drums)
With guests:
– Jaded Lungs (vocals track 3)
– The Orchestra of the Silent Stars (orchestra)