SERMON

“If religion didn’t exist, I’m pretty sure people would kill each other anyway.”

and Michael Jackson, religion is a subject that many of us would rather avoid. Nonetheless, the lure of the spiritual remains a constant in even the most secular societies. With that in mind, the overwhelming atmosphere of holy reverence and spiritual awe that permeates every moment of Sermon’s debut album seems both wilfully incongruous hugely poignant. It’s as if this mysterious London-based entity are harnessing religion’s undeniable emotional power for their own progressive metal ends, with genuinely revelatory results. With shades of Katatonia, Anathema and Opeth, readers will need little encouragement to succumb to the whole reverb-drenched enterprise, but none of the aforementioned bands ever sounded quite this otherworldly.