There has always been something shadowy about Crippled Black Phoenix. Something that does not so much invite you in as wait for you to step a little too close.
That has been true across their work for years, but “Sceaduhelm” feels like a narrowing of that darkness rather than a broadening of it. Not a departure, exactly. More like the band have taken the vastness, the grief, the unease, the politics and the cinematic sweep, then stripped away anything that might make it too comfortable.
Written largely between 2023 and 2025, “Sceaduhelm” is, by all accounts, a record born from uncertainty, self-questioning and prolonged doubt. You can hear that. Not in any lack of confidence, because Crippled Black Phoenix never sound unsure of who they are, but in the way these songs seem to circle themselves, searching for a point of release that often never quite comes.
That is important. This is not a record built around easy catharsis. It favours restraint over explosion, repetition over quick reward, tension over comfort. Justin Greaves remains the sole composer of the music, while the lyrics came later, assigned to the voices that could best carry them emotionally. Belinda Kordic, Ryan Patterson and Justin Storms all appear here, and that matters too, because “Sceaduhelm” often feels less like a band record in the traditional sense and more like a series of psychological states being passed between people.
“One Man Wall Of Death” begins as a slow-building epic, acting almost as an intro, if you will. It is not in a hurry, and neither should it be. Crippled Black Phoenix understand space. They understand that sometimes the heaviest thing you can do is let something unfold until the air around it starts to change.
“Ravenettes” takes things somewhere darker still, almost gothic rock in tone, while “Things Start Falling Apart” does exactly what the title suggests. This is exhaustion not as a bad day, but as a permanent condition. Time, on “Sceaduhelm”, is not a healer. It erodes. It leaves people hollowed out and staring at the wreckage.
“No Epitaph / The Precipice” is the first real centrepiece. Darker, folkier, more acoustic at first, it asks plaintively, “is this where it ends?” You sense not. It feels ripped from late night, before the second half bursts out and expands, awash with strings and lead guitar, before moving into black metal. It is quite something.
“The Void” changes the atmosphere completely, and the spoken-word elements across the record are fascinating. They underline the sense that this is more than just music, or at least that Crippled Black Phoenix want it to function as something beyond songs on a tracklist. There is testimony here. There is accusation. There is endurance.
The tracks where Belinda Kordic takes prominence have a nightmarish quality, and “Vampire Grave” leans into that beautifully. It is one of the more gothic moments here, less in the cartoon sense and more in the genuinely unsettling sense. This is not bats and candles. This is something colder. Something closer to the bone.
“Under The Eye” stretches past seven minutes with the kind of slow escalation that Crippled Black Phoenix have made their own, while “Tired To The Bone” might be the album’s most obvious statement of intent. That title could almost stand for the whole thing. There is a weariness here that feels earned, but never defeated.
By the time “Beautiful Destroyer” arrives, there is something almost classical in the way the record draws itself to a close, and something unsettling about that too. It is mercurial, ephemeral, floating, and yet it carries enormous weight. It feels like the credits rolling while you are still trying to digest what has happened.
That, really, is “Sceaduhelm” in miniature. It does not resolve as much as endure. It is dark, difficult, occasionally beautiful, often uncomfortable and never interested in giving you the easy way through.
Which, of course, is exactly why it works.
Rating 8/10
