Style: art rock, post-rock, progressive rock (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Pink Floyd, The Gathering, Chelsea Wolfe
Country: United Kingdom
Release date: 17 April 2026

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When I drive out of Los Angeles and into the surrounding mountains, I instantly feel at ease. Despite the narrow mountain roads, sheer cliffs, and jagged five-thousand-foot peaks surrounding me, calmness—maybe relief—washes over. Perhaps nature’s enormity grounds me, the millions-of-years-old rock faces imbuing a sense of natural permanence that contrasts with the incessant Sunset Boulevard traffic outside my apartment. Or maybe I’m simply meant for a habitat other than the sprawling metro that is LA, and this mental surrender is my brain’s way of telling me that. 

Whatever the case may be, I’ve always had the same feeling when listening to Crippled Black Phoenix. In theory, the band’s patented “endtime ballads” shouldn’t be comforting—dense, doom-influenced chunks of atmospheric progressive and post-rock, with tracks often stretching well over ten minutes. Yet, just like a panorama of towering mountains, the band’s tectonic compositions trigger something in my head. I feel a sense of sweet acquiescence as the musicians join together to signal a weary apocalypse. 

With Sceaduhelm, however, comes a narrowing of focus: tightened songwriting and a preference for restraint and repetition. If CBP’s prior releases were the spectacle, Sceaduhelm is what remains once the spectacle has faded. The record is less a range of imposing peaks and more a journey through the land lying in the mountain’s shadow. With this recontextualization, can Sceaduhelm retain the band’s distinct, extraordinary impact?

Sceaduhelm was masterminded and produced by Justin Greaves, who composed all the music and then assigned the vocal and lyrical duties for each track to collaborators Ryan Patterson, Justin Storms, and CBP mainstay Belinda Kordic. This approach plays out masterfully—a consistent, gothic sonic thread holds the album together, while each vocalist colors their respective tracks with a distinct timbre and lyrical style. Kordic’s beautiful voice and eldritch flair shine in her five tracks, while Patterson provides a strong, gruff contrast in cuts like “Vampire Grave” and “Beautiful Destroyer.” Storms’ dreary delivery, meanwhile, brings glum lethargy to “Things Start Falling Apart” and “Colder and Colder.” The listening experience is both varied and cohesive, making the record’s hour-plus runtime fly by. 

For a relatively focused work, Sceaduhelm’s songs still run the musical gamut. Pre-release singles “Ravenettes” and “Vampire Grave” are instantly enjoyable gothic rockers, the former being particularly infectious with its anthemic chorus and lively riffs. Both tracks’ straightforwardness and energy make them a rarity among CBP’s discography. More in line with the band’s classic sound, closing track “Beautiful Destroyer” builds patiently with distorted, doomy guitars and tom hits before breaking into a massive, multi-layered cathartic climax that takes the song beyond eight and a half minutes, the longest of the album. “Under the Eye” follows a similar template, but in a softer, subdued fashion. Kordic’s vocals float with a tender fragility over light chords and piano, gaining power in the track’s second half as the drums speed up, the piano attacks with greater force, and the guitars become more prominent. “Beautiful Destroyer” and “Under the Eye” stand up with the best of Crippled Black Phoenix’s work, each an early song-of-the-year contender for me. 

Elsewhere on the album, “Things Start Falling Apart” leans into moody post-rock, replete with soaring tremolo picking. “Hollows End” and “Colder and Colder” offer crunchy bass lines and a post-punk feel, while “Dropout” sees Crippled Black Phoenix wade into trip-hop territory with tumbling electronic drums, pulsating synths, and a raspy distortion in Kordic’s vocals. On the other end of the spectrum is “Tired to the Bone,” where a delicate mellotron and a lazy 3/4 rhythm lie beneath a dreamy, heartfelt performance from Kordic. Whichever genres the band mix in, they do so with pure class. The Pink Floyd influence found in much of CBP’s past work resurfaces in “No Epitaph / The Precipice,” in both the song’s ballad-like first half and its groovy, psychedelic bridge. And, love them or hate them, the wacky samples that Greaves consistently peppers into the band’s music play a prominent role once again—giving the record a quirky bend, but overstaying their welcome on a few occasions. 

Greaves’ tightened approach to songwriting results in an album that’s simple to pick up and enjoy at any point; there’s a nice flow to Sceaduhelm that makes it best experienced in full, but its songs also work well in isolation. One slight downside, at least to me, is a lack of the winding, grandiose epics that I had come to expect from CBP. Fortunately, even with this intentional stripping back of grandeur, a few of the record’s more adventurous tracks journey through several textures and land with plenty of impact. Also, at twelve tracks long, some cuts feel less essential than others—it took me a few listens to warm to the mid-album stretch comprising “The Void,” “Hollows End,” and “Dropout.” Still, I can’t conclude anything other than that Crippled Black Phoenix have delivered once again. Sceaduhelm is a resounding success and will spend plenty of time in my ears this year and beyond. 

Throughout much of their career, the band have held tightly to a particular adage: a wolf changes its fur but not its nature. Sceaduhelm is a new look for the same beast; narrowed in focus but uncompromisingly and unabashedly CBP, compelling from end to end. The record might not be the sonic mountain range I’m accustomed to, yet it hits me all the same—an instant sense of comfort moments after the needle drops. Crippled Black Phoenix have carefully wrought and maintained a remarkable essence that’s uniquely their own, and they show no signs of compromising.

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Recommended tracks: Ravenettes, Under the Eye, Beautiful Destroyer
You may also like: -ii-, Oak, Kauan, Manes
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Season of Mist

Crippled Black Phoenix have a fluid rather than an established lineup. The credits on Sceaduhelm vary by track, but include:
– Justin Greaves (music, guitars, drums, samples, melotron, synths, kaosolator)
– Belinda Kordic (vocals, lyrics, percussion)
– Wes Wasley (bass)
– Lucy Marshall (piano, synths, Hammond organ)
– Ryan Patterson (vocals, lyrics)
– Justin Storms (vocals, lyrics)
– Rene Misje (guitars)
– Andy Taylor (guitars)
– Robin Tow (percussion)
– Iver Sandøy (percussion)