You could take a pretty educated guess as to the genre of The Infernal Sea's music before hearing so much as a note.
Hailing from East Anglia, UK, this black-metal quartet have made their aesthetic as much a part of their overall appeal as their diabolically heavy tunes, donning black robes and a combination of rune-inscribed and plague doctor-style facemasks.
But the costumes are no gimmick – these guys possess musical ability in bountiful supply. A cursory listen to Negotium Crucis – the band's second full-length – is enough to prove that.
Take Befallen Order, for example. Guitarist Jonathan Egmore perfectly blends melody with brutality, deploying a clutch of rapid-fire riffs over a savage blastbeat backdrop.
He joins us today, attired in his full plague doctor getup – very apt for the times, we know – to play through the track in full.
While he plays a Gibson Explorer on the album version of the track, this time he wields an ESP LTD EC-Black Metal electric guitar fitted with Ernie Ball Power Slinky strings.
- The Infernal Sea's new album Negotium Crucis is available now via Apocalyptic Witchcraft.
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Sam was Staff Writer at GuitarWorld.com from 2019 to 2023, and also created content for Total Guitar, Guitarist and Guitar Player. He has well over 15 years of guitar playing under his belt, as well as a degree in Music Technology (Mixing and Mastering). He's a metalhead through and through, but has a thorough appreciation for all genres of music. In his spare time, Sam creates point-of-view guitar lesson videos on YouTube under the name Sightline Guitar.
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