Review by Felix on November 18, 2025.

The Greek rumble again. Multi-instrumentalist Ungod, also part of Slaughtered Priest and therefore alone a true hero, and vocalist Nadir release another Sad album. In terms of quantity, it is a massive block. The duo loves its eight songs so much that the album clocks in after 54 minutes. But, just like the fifth title promises, "All Come To An End" (the Songs) and so this track has to be taken much more serious than the name of the third cut: "Fury Long Lost". No way.

In a nutshell, Sad do Sad-things. With the grace of a restlessly rotating concrete mixer, the songs deliver pretty stormy, sinister and narrow-minded guitar lines. Melodies? Only as much as absolutely necessary and as little as possible. The dominating guitars create a thicket of endlessly flowing tones, supported by a dense, somewhat sticky (but not sugary) production. Sometimes a ray of light shines through the dark surrounding and gives a little orientation. The aforementioned "Fury Long Lost" delivers a catchy opening sequence and the entire track scores with a high degree of coherence. The spooky beginning and ending of "Die In Pain" also find its way into my brain directly. Nevertheless, sometimes it is a tough job to decode the monstrous songs. Of course, they are not progressive or even academically arranged. However, the number of different parts and tempo changes is remarkable and challenging at the same time.

Lead singer Nadir does not follow the trend. Instead of contributing to the musical diversity, he keeps his approach rigorously unmodified. His throaty, somehow animal-like nagging and screaming walks the thin line between parody and horror from time to time, but at the end he manages a solid, more or less expressive, genre-typical performance. Again and again it is baffling, how many maledictions one can integrate in just one album, isn't it? But Nadir's text sheet is long and the letters are written in size 7. Apart from that, his singing appears pretty much exactly how I would imagine the voice of this strange creature on the cover to sound. In that respect, it's a harmonious concept.

But don't think that harmony or even harmonies play a big role in the cosmos of Sad, because "Fullmoon's Bestial Awakening" does not expand the horizon of the two men of conviction. Their raw, somewhat cold-blooded yet never sterile approach generates its own kind of infernal atmosphere and the longer the album lasts, the more it becomes irresistible. Not because of the songs themselves – they do not get better and better, they are on a constantly high level. But full-length number nine (imagine nine exclamation marks right here) is one of this nearly magic outputs where the whole is more than just the sum of its single parts. Not only this, the album grows with each spin a little bit more and I am curious where this process will end. Maybe I should wait with my rating, but how long? Two hours, four weeks, a decade? It makes no sense. What I can definitely say is that the opener "Rampage" is a good, appropriately violent piece, but if I consider the old dogma of putting always a highlight on the first position, I would not have picked this track for the exposed location. Already the following "Raison D'Etre" has more fire, better guitar leads and maybe more intensity as well.

What I really like when it comes to Sad is the fact that they play pretty demanding songs that seem to be primitive at first glance. This way of proceeding combines technical and song-writing skills with the basic ideas of black metal in an exciting manner. With this in mind, I am already eagerly awaiting their round anniversary, album no. 10. I would not be surprised if the Greeks will rumble (masterfully) again on this future work.

Rating: 8 out of 10