Subscribe to my YouTube channel right here!

Crypt Sermon laid waste to the doom metal world in 2024 with their record The Stygian Rose, but apparently there were more kickass tunes that we didn’t hear from those sessions, and now we get to hear them and they’re just as good as that album, which is saying something.

Now about one year out from the release of The Stygian Rose, Crypt Sermon is back with a new EP called Saturnian Appendices, which digs even deeper into the rich, shadow-drenched world that they originally conjured up on The Stygian Rose. Saturnian Appendices is split neatly into two sides and partially serves as an extension of The Stygian Rose, plus it’s got two really good B-sides that you probably haven’t heard and you really should.

The A-side of Saturnian Appendices features two previously unreleased tracks – “Only Ash and Dust” and “A Fool to Believe” – both recorded during The Stygian Rose sessions that are fully realized epics that easily stand alongside anything on that record.

Or if you want to hear it from the band themselves, Crypt Sermon vocalist Brooks Wilson said that The Stygian Rose tracks on Saturnian Appendices “illuminate the shadowed thoughts of the narrator from The Stygian Rose, expanding on the tensions that arise as one confronts the conflicts between orthodoxy and occult.”

And then on the B-side, fans are treated to two gems from the band’s contributions to Decibel Magazine’s FlexiDisc series. You’ve got the original track “Lacrimose,” which was first released in 2024 as a standalone single, and the doom-laden reimagining of Mayhem‘s classic “De Mysteris Dom Satanas,” which debuted originally in 2016.

“Only Ash and Dust” is the perfect opener for Saturnian Appendices. It’s a track that immediately sets the tone with a haunting, distant synthesizer and clean, mournful guitar lines. It’s an eerie and cinematic intro that slowly builds tension, drawing you into the gloom right as the full band comes crashing down out of the darkness with a full-on, slow-burning doom groove. That groove kind of morphs into this galloping rhythm and driving double bass section before settling into the verse, and at this point, despite being pretty early on in the song, you’ve definitely had your face melted at least twice so far.

As the song unfolds, “Only Ash and Dust” moves seamlessly between brooding doom and some pretty classic heavy metal territory, even channeling some striking Jeff Loomis-style sweeps in front of a very Nevermore riff. Then around the four-minute mark, the tempo shifts again, and out of nowhere, you’re hit with one of the most vicious, razor-sharp Nevermore-esque riffs Crypt Sermon has ever unleashed.

And yeah, I know, there’s two Nevermore references that I made in one song, but that’s just what it sounds like to me. It’s a phenomenal break in an already phenomenal song, which Crypt Sermon then manages to tie back together into everything that you heard in the first half and bring it all to a close. And then just as things are reaching their epic peak through one final chorus, the track comes full circle and fades out with the same ghostly synthesizer that introduced you to the track in the first place. It’s perfect.

“A Fool to Believe” is a little tighter than “Only Ash and Dust,” but it’s no less potent. Where “Only Ash and Dust” winds through shifting tempos and progressive detours, “A Fool to Believe” locks into a more classic, stomping structure that feels like a tribute to the genre’s forebears, but sharper and heavier and definitely more dangerous.

One of the track’s most effective moments comes right at the end of the chorus, where the band throws in this brief but brilliant slowdown using this triplet grouping. It only happens a few times, but it gives the whole song this enormous lumbering momentum, like a beast turning before charging again. It’s the kind of subtle, clever touch that Crypt Sermon really excels at, making something feel massive without overplaying their hand. And again, you’ll see it throughout this entire song. It’s genius.

And speaking of massive, it’s probably time that we talk about guitarist Steve Jansson. The man is not only a mutant when it comes to playing these truly tendon-shredding solos, but his melodic vocabulary and phrasing and just overall placement of notes really takes things to another pretty much mythical level.

“A Fool to Believe” isn’t as lead-heavy as “Only Ash and Dust,” but don’t let that fool you because the solos on this song are still really, truly impressive and beautiful, I guess. They’re their own compositions. The man is just really, really good and definitely deserves more credit than he gets.

And then we flip over to the B-side, which again, features the Decibel Magazine FlexiDisc series songs. First up is “Lacrimose,” which plays like a stripped-down, more somber cousin to something off The Stygian Rose. There’s a weary grace to it. The verses mope and drift in all the right ways, pulling you deeper into its emotional weight until suddenly it opens up into a very massive widescreen chorus.

Distant vocal harmonies soar over lush, immersive instrumentation, and for a brief moment, everything just totally blooms out of nowhere. It’s a short track by Crypt Sermon‘s standards, but every second is very carefully sculpted and it hits with real resonance.

And finally, we arrive at “De Mysteris Doom Satanas,” a bold, fully reimagined take on Mayhem‘s legendary “De Mysteris Dom Satanas.” And I don’t know if you’ve ever heard that song, because it came out in 2016, but it wasn’t really available in a lot of places, but you need to hear this because this is not just a cover, this is a transformation of a black metal classic into something completely new.

Crypt Sermon reshapes the song into a lumbering doom anthem, stripping away the cold ferocity of the original and replacing it with towering atmosphere and weight. Honestly, I think it might be one of the most clever and convincingly executed covers I’ve heard in a very long time.

That being said, it does feel a little disjointed as a closer to the EP, not because of any dip in quality, far from it, but because it’s so stylistically distinct from the rest of the EP, and it was also produced 9 years ago as opposed to everything else which was produced in 2024 and 2025.

The production on the cover is noticeably more raw and aged compared to the pristine depth of the newer tracks, which again makes sense considering it was recorded nearly a decade ago. But still, context matters, and in the context of this EP, which is all about unearthing hidden gems and giving rare material a proper home, it does work.

If anything, it’s a fitting final gesture on this EP, a band looking backward not with nostalgia but with reverence and reinvention for what they’ve done. So yeah, if you’re going to view this as a collection of B-sides and rarities, it totally works. If you’re looking to have a singular experience on this EP, slightly different story, but I really don’t think that’s what Crypt Sermon is trying to do here.

In the end, Saturnian Appendices isn’t just a stopgap or a fan-service rarity dump, it’s a fully realized worthy addition to Crypt Sermon‘s ever-growing body of work. All four songs on this EP are absolutely vital to what Crypt Sermon does, and if you are a fan of this band, or if you’re just a fan of doom metal, you need to hear it because it is really, truly good.

Crypt Sermon remains one of those rare modern metal bands where every member feels absolutely essential to the final product. Every performance, every arrangement, every choice matters. Everyone in this band is pulling their own weight. You could zoom in on what everyone’s doing individually in each song and you’re going to find something plenty interesting. Nobody’s just holding down the fort or anything like that. Everybody is pushing things forward. Everyone is contributing to the whole of the song, and you can absolutely hear that on this EP and everything else they’ve done.

So this might come as a shocker to some of you, but Saturnian Appendices is a 9 out of 10 for me. This EP is truly awesome. If you are a fan of doom metal, if you are a fan of Crypt Sermon, you need to hear this EP. It’s real good.