heavy-metal-darkness: Qrixkuor | The Womb Of The World | Invictus Productions/Dark Descent Records

Saturday, November 8, 2025

Qrixkuor | The Womb Of The World | Invictus Productions/Dark Descent Records

Release Date: November 7, 2025

Format: CD / LP / Digital

Genre: Death/Black Metal

Country: United Kingdom

Emerging from the dark depths of London, Qrixkuor was formed in 2011 by the entity known only as S. From the start, their music has been a vision of ritualistic chaos, weaving together the density of death metal with the surreal vastness of black metal. Their earlier works, including “Poison Palinopsia” (2021) and “Zoetrope” (2022), already showed a band unafraid to stare into the abyss. Now, “The Womb Of The World” pushes that descent even further, a labyrinthine continuation of Qrixkuor’s haunting worldbuilding.

This second full-length album moves like a storm across time and memory. Across four long compositions, Qrixkuor builds a sonic monument of decay and transcendence. The production by Greg Chandler gives every layer a tangible density, thick walls of guitars surge alongside cavernous roars, while the drums strike like collapsing monoliths. The symphonic passages, performed by The Orchestra Of The Silent Stars, do not soften the aggression but deepen it, adding a sense of vastness that is more like the echo of some ancient cosmic machinery than traditional orchestration.

There’s an almost cinematic pacing to how the album unfolds. “So Spoke The Silent Stars” draws the listener in with a slow spiral of dread before bursting into full possession. “Slithering Serendipity” continues this feverish escalation, its atmosphere chokingly intense, twisting through endless layers of dissonance and ritual percussion. The guest appearance of Jaded Lungs (Adorior) in “And You Shall Know Perdition As Your Shrine” adds a venomous dimension, her voice is a harrowing invocation amid the storm. The closing “The Womb Of The World” ties the entire descent together, collapsing all previous chaos into a cataclysmic conclusion, as if the universe itself were being torn open from within.

Qrixkuor has crafted something that is apocalyptic and strangely serene at once. It’s an album to be absorbed, not merely heard, demanding total immersion. The balance between chaos and order is constantly shifting, and within that tension lies the band’s true art. Every sound seems to come from a place beyond the flesh, from the deepest ruins of existence. “The Womb Of The World” stands as a monumental expansion of Qrixkuor’s vision, an overwhelming, suffocating, and strangely majestic creation that solidifies them as one of the most evocative and unrelenting forces in extreme metal today.

Score: 7.3