UK death metallers CELESTIAL SANCTUARY have announced their new album, Cradle Of The Rotten, Shrine To Those Most Foul, arriving January 22, 2027 via Metal Blade Records. The band has also released the album’s first single, “Lashed By Chain,” accompanied by a new music video.
The record marks CELESTIAL SANCTUARY’s Metal Blade debut and finds the band refining its identity while expanding beyond the traditional boundaries of death metal.
“Our intention this time around was to refine what actually this ‘CELESTIAL SANCTUARY thing’ is,” the band explains, “filtering out all the bullshit, ignoring trends and ignoring what people expect us to do, and we’re a way better band for it.”
Rather than abandoning their death metal foundation, CELESTIAL SANCTUARY use it as the starting point for a broader approach to heavy metal. The band describes the resulting album as roughly 25% death metal and 75% everything else that has shaped their musical identity.
Running 47 minutes, Cradle Of The Rotten, Shrine To Those Most Foul draws heavily from the history, folklore, and darker legends surrounding Bury St. Edmunds and the band’s home territory. Its stories incorporate the death of King Edmund, the spectral Black Shuck, the Red Barn Murder, witch trials, the Sunken Bells of Dunwich, the Lantern Man, and the region’s history of executions.
“Lashed By Chain” was the first song written for the record and became an early blueprint for its direction.
“This was the first song to be written for this album and an immediate statement of intent for what to expect,” vocalist/guitarist Tom Cronin says. “Tight, fast riffing, a brutal slam that jumps out of the shadows to piledrive you into oblivion and a big dual guitar solo that wouldn’t sound out of place in a Maiden tune.”
Lyrically, the song follows a knight whose acceptance of riches seals his fate in an unwinnable war, exploring survival, longing, false hope, and the realization that there will be no happy ending.
“Musically, we wanted to channel a tighter rhythmic sound on this record,” Cronin adds. “We really wanted to push the limit of what we could do with syncopated riffs and sudden time signature changes.”
Cronin also directed and produced the accompanying “Lashed By Chain” video. The performance footage was filmed inside a ninth-century deconsecrated church built on a burial site, with its lighting and visual presentation designed to complement the album artwork by James Bousema.
Animation created by Ben Amos Cooper further connects the video to the visual world surrounding Cradle Of The Rotten, Shrine To Those Most Foul.
Cradle Of The Rotten, Shrine To Those Most Foul Track Listing
- “Where the Blood Flows”
- “Bonestorm”
- “They Worm Their Way In”
- “Cradle of the Rotten”
- “Shrine To Those Most Foul”
- “Enter the Sanctuary”
- “Lashed By Chain”
- “A Dogged Act”
- “Subhuman Scum”
The album will be available digitally, on CD, and across several vinyl variants. Pre-order
CELESTIAL SANCTUARY will also join KHEMMIS for an upcoming European and UK tour beginning this month.
Cradle Of The Rotten, Shrine To Those Most Foul arrives January 22, 2027 via Metal Blade Records.