Sabbath Assembly’s highly anticipated fifth album, Sabbath Assembly, marks a new beginning for the band: its “Great Schism” from the Process Church of the Final Judgment. Like the albatross falling from the mariner’s neck, the band has freed itself from the cult’s theology in order to explore its own creations – with no special guest appearances or narrative frills.Sabbath Assembly is, in fact, a decidedly metal offering, for in the writing, the band returned to its own personal roots in the dark age of the ’80s. These are Sabbath Assembly’s own “hymns” for their own “church” – a place marked by passion, devotion, and the gospel of metal. The primary thematic difference between Sabbath Assembly and its predecessors is that this album is about embodiment, addressing all the power and grit required to endure our human existence, rather than exploring spiritual philosophy alone. While the songs reference occult literature, such as Robert Chambers’ The King in Yellow, Valeri Briussov’s The Fiery Angel of Desire, and The Gospel of Thomas, these texts were chosen not because of their abstraction from the mundane, but rather their propensity to embrace it as a means to spiritual understanding. If something is to be taken away from the new Sabbath Assembly album, it is this: the mysteries of occult philosophy are revealed not through celestial charts and diagrams, but rather the subtleties of earthly love and loss. <a href="https://sabbathassembly.bandcamp.com/album/sabbath-assembly">Sabbath Assembly by Sabbath Assembly</a>
