Four years after the great “Out Of The Garden” (that created a big fuss) Crypt Sermon are back and hopefully they don’t disappoint as they keep carving steel in the underground genre of epic doom metal.

We admire the beautiful album cover as the first track “The Ninth Templar” fit us into their world. Horses’ hooves, swords on the anvil, everything’s done the right way to put us in the mood as the rhythm of the song leaves no doubts what we’re about to listen for the next 55 minutes (a mixture of Candlemass and Solitude Aeturnus via a general cloak of traditional melodic heavy metal, the one we loved in the 80s). Tempo gets slower after that, at my personal favorite “Key Of Solomon” is the lead guitar that takes us by the hand while the band doesn’t hesitate to differ in other tracks, take for example the way more doomy “Christ is Dead”. The highlight of the album will come at the end of the album where we have the homonymous track “The Ruins of Fading Light”, a 10 minute impressive track that leave the best impressions.

Superb songwtitting by a guitar riff-driven band that offers inspired compositions in general with some interludes here and there that add to the brooding doom vibes, good traditional sound (hopefully the production is not very clean/plastic), great guitar work by Janssson and Lipczynski, on bass Frank Chin (Vektor are gods!) while I was impressed by the way Brooks Wilson choose to sing in a wide range of styles and he’s doing it successfully in most cases (apart from some weird moments on the upper range).

Crypt Sermon manage to cope with the difficult second step with a work that is more dark and epic this time and any neoclassical elements are wiped off.