Before diving into Astralis, it’s worth clarifying a question that often comes up with Azell: are they a Christian metal band? The answer is not so straightforward. Courtney and David Napier are Christians, and their label – Rottweiler Records – is widely associated with the Christian metal and hardcore scene. However, Azell’s music is not evangelistic nor overtly religious. Their lyrics explore dark, science-fiction narratives and cosmic horror rather than biblical themes.
The most accurate way to describe them is as sludge/doom metal created by Christians, but not Christian metal in the strict sense. This distinction helps to place Azell within the scene more clearly – at the intersection of the artists’ faith identity and a broader, secular artistic vision.
There are bands who simply release music—and then there are bands like Azell, who open portals to terrifying dimensions of sound. Hailing from Louisville, Kentucky, this devastating two-piece entity has spent the last few years warping the boundaries of sludge, doom, and atmospheric horror into something new, alien, and unrelenting. If their 2024 debut Death Control was a warning shot, their sophomore album Astralis is the detonation of a supernova—obliterating expectations and engulfing everything in its path with monolithic force and conceptual ambition.
Let’s be clear from the outset: Astralis isn’t just a collection of tracks. It is a journey—an odyssey into cosmic grief, existential horror, and the collapse of time itself. Crafted with obsessive precision and executed with punishing conviction, this record not only refines Azell’s self-described “space sludge” aesthetic, but elevates it to new, terrifying heights. It’s a masterwork of narrative sound—an experience as literary as it is sonic, as philosophical as it is physical.
From the very beginning, Azell’s sound has stood apart in the modern extreme music underground. Formed in 2022 by the husband-and-wife team of David Napier (guitars, drums, vocals) and Courtney Napier (bass, vocals, drums), the band has never been interested in fitting comfortably into any pre-established scene. Instead, they’ve constructed their own bleak corner of the sonic universe—drawing from the crushing weight of doom metal, the corrosive grit of sludge, and the ominous narratives of science fiction and cosmic horror.
The term “space sludge” isn’t just a marketing gimmick; it’s a sincere attempt to name the unnamable. Azell’s music operates on a macrocosmic scale. Where traditional doom often obsesses over decay, death, and despair in the earthly sense, Azell expands the lens to include entropy on a cosmic level. This isn’t just music about dying—it’s music about the death of time, of stars, of meaning. Their sound is what it might feel like to be the last sentient mind drifting through the silence of a dying galaxy.
At the center of Astralis lies a deeply conceptual foundation. The album isn’t merely a set of loosely connected tracks—it’s the aural companion to a novella, penned by the band, and described as a “throwback to the pulp science fiction of the early 20th century.” Each chapter of the novella corresponds to a song on the album, blending narrative fiction with immersive, otherworldly sonics.
The decision to intertwine fiction and music isn’t entirely new in metal—concept albums have existed for decades—but Azell’s approach feels deeply unique. They don’t just narrate a story; they embody it in sound. The music acts as a translation of emotion, theme, and texture. You feel the dread, the wonder, the weight of the story—not just in the lyrics, but in every plodding drum hit, every dissonant guitar scrape, every low-end churn that vibrates your ribcage.
Let us now walk the shadowed path that Astralis lays before us—track by track, abyss by abyss.
1. From The Womb Of Oblivion
The album opens not with a bang, but with a groan—a low, tectonic rumble that heralds the beginning of something immense and irreversible. This first track is also the first chapter of the novella, and it wastes no time establishing the tone of cosmic despair that defines the entire work.
Courtney’s bass crashes like meteor impacts against the surface of an alien planet, while David’s guitars slowly carve out jagged fault lines in time. The riffs are deliberate and massive, moving like glaciers—unstoppable and ancient. Courtney’s vocals are a revelation here: shrieked and howled in equal measure, soaked in venom and grief, they sound like transmissions from a being trapped in stasis, eons from home.
2. Monolithic Terror
This track is exactly what its title promises: monolithic in scope, terrifying in execution. The production deserves particular praise here—the drum tone is cavernous, almost orchestral, with toms that sound like detonations in deep space. The riffs ride atop a thick sludge of feedback and distortion, punctuated by eerie lead melodies that slither in and out of the mix like alien parasites.
It’s a track that plays with scale, repeatedly shrinking the listener down and then engulfing them in vastness. There are moments of claustrophobic minimalism and others of sweeping, doom-laden grandeur. Throughout, the band maintains a remarkable sense of tension—it never becomes comfortable, never predictable.
3. When Darkness Unfolds
More than any other song on the album, this piece sounds like a dirge for lost civilizations. Imagine the coronation procession of undead monarchs drifting through a nebula of ash and ice. The riffs here are slow-motion death marches, lined with funereal harmonies and bolstered by the kind of droning atmosphere that brings Sunn O))) to mind.
Lyrically, it offers a meditation on the metaphysical consequences of hopelessness. Not just sadness, but the active unraveling of self. Courtney and David trade vocal duties here, creating a duality of voices—almost like two souls trapped in the same cosmic void, arguing with the darkness.
4. Waves Of Remembrance
This is one of the standout compositions on Astralis—a track of staggering emotional depth. There’s a sorrow here that transcends genre. It feels less like sludge and more like some new form of grief-metal, composed in a language no human truly understands.
The tempo is funereal, the tone elegiac. Guitars are layered in sheets of feedback, and at moments, a clean melody peeks through the haze like a star glimpsed through pollution. It’s a song that seems to ask: What do we remember when time itself begins to decay?
5. The End Is Inevitable
Bleak, unrelenting, and unapologetic. This track is the purest expression of fatalism on the record. It doesn’t rage against the dying of the light—it catalogues the death of the stars in slow, methodical detail.
The riffs are oppressively repetitive, creating a sense of ritual—a doomsday chant, echoing across dead worlds. There's something priestly in the cadence of the vocals, something liturgical in the way the rhythms lock into place. This is the sound of apocalypse not as a cataclysm, but as a weary certainty.
6. Time Slows To Nothing
The album’s closing epic is nothing short of a masterpiece. Over the course of ten minutes, Azell decelerates the universe. The riffs slow. The drums lag. The vocals become ghostly murmurs. You can practically hear the passage of time grinding to a halt.
A sudden burst of saxophone in the final minute is perhaps the most unexpected moment on the album—and yet, it fits perfectly. It’s the sound of dying breath, of one last pulse of creativity before everything stops. A jazz funeral for the stars.
And then—silence.
Unlike many bands in the doom and sludge sphere, Azell does not hide behind murk or fuzz. The production here is incredibly clear without sacrificing weight. Engineered and mastered by David Napier himself, Astralis achieves that rare sonic alchemy where every instrument breathes, yet the collective sound feels like being buried beneath a planet.
The drums thunder but never drown. The guitars are massive but articulate. The bass feels like its own tectonic layer. Vocals—especially the alternation between David’s growls and Courtney’s banshee howls—cut through with laser precision.
This is high-fidelity despair.
David also provides the cover art for Astralis, and it is as evocative as the music itself. The image—an ominous planetary landscape slowly being devoured by a swirling, cosmic vortex—captures the emotional palette of the album perfectly: decay, awe, futility, reverence. It looks like a forgotten sci-fi paperback from 1973 crossed with a prophecy etched in obsidian.
This synergy between sound and image is a key part of what makes Azell special. Every element of the release—music, narrative, artwork, production—serves a unified creative vision. Nothing is accidental. Everything has weight.
Astralis is not an easy listen. Nor is it meant to be. It’s an immersive, emotionally harrowing, and sonically devastating piece of art that rewards patience and punishes passivity. It’s a slow fall into oblivion, rendered with terrifying beauty.
For fans of bands like Conan, Primitive Man, Rwake, or Bongripper, this album offers a familiar palette—but pushes it far beyond standard tropes. There’s more intelligence here, more story, more atmosphere. It doesn’t just crush the body—it whispers to the soul.
In an era oversaturated with content, Astralis demands presence. It demands surrender. And if you’re brave enough to descend into its void, you may just find something transcendent staring back.Album Information
Band: Azell
Album: Astralis
Genre: Space Sludge / Conceptual Doom
Label: Rottweiler Records
Release Date: October 17, 2025
For Fans Of: Conan, Bongripper, Rwake, Primitive Man
Line-Up:
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David Napier – Guitars, Drums, Vocals, Production, Artwork
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Courtney Napier – Bass, Vocals, Drums