Las Vegas blackened deathcore outfit Ov Sulfur have never exactly been subtle, but “Endless” is the first time it feels as though their music is trying to outlive them. From the moment the first single dropped, this was one of those records I was determined to get my hands on, and happily, this is one of those rare cases where the anticipation doesn’t collapse under its own weight.
“Endless” is the band’s second full-length, following 2023’s “The Burden ov Faith”, and arrives on 16th January 2026 via Century Media Records. The line-up: Ricky Hoover on vocals, Chase Wilson on guitars and vocals, Leviathvn on drums, Josh Bearden on bass and Christian Becker on guitars, have built this one around a tight conceptual thread: what happens if doubt, grief, loneliness and fear don’t subside, but stretch on forever.
The old anti-religion through-line is still here, but instead of lobbing grenades at dogma from the outside, Ov Sulfur sit inside the emotional fallout and ask what “eternity” would actually feel like if you couldn’t switch it off.
Sonically, this is very much symphonic, blackened deathcore in the modern idiom; think towering orchestration, cinematic choir pads and a lot of layered voices, but crucially, it’s built on riffs and songs, not just production tricks. Josh Schroeder’s mix is predictably huge: the low end is thick without turning to fog, the drums slam without flattening the guitars, and the orchestral layers add genuine scale rather than functioning as generic wallpaper.
Opener “Endless//Godless” raises the curtain with something more substantial than the usual throwaway intro. It’s essentially one long, suffocating breakdown, Hoover vomiting out imagery of regret and corrosion over a slow, slam that sets the thematic and sonic tone in ninety brutal seconds. It feels like a live set intro waiting to happen, but it also ties straight into “Seed”, the first proper song and one of the record’s lynchpins.
“Seed” is where the “Endless” concept really clicks into focus. Lyrically, it’s total regret weaponised – the idea that the thing gnawing at you will never be outgrown, only embedded more deeply. Musically, it’s classic Ov Sulfur on steroids: saw-toothed riffs, big swings between blast-beat violence and half-time swagger, choirs swelling behind the chorus, and Hoover flipping from monstrous lows to pained highs without losing intelligibility. The orchestration isn’t there to make the song epic; it’s there to amplify the claustrophobia.
“Forlorn” takes that sense of no-exit and makes it explicit. The lyric is basically a love letter to isolation, and the music follows suit: doomed-out chord choices, spacious clean passages and then these sudden, jagged surges where black-metal tremolo, double-kick flurries and symphonic stabs all collide. “Vast Eternal”, written primarily by Leviathvn, is one of the record’s darkest moments; it leans much harder into the blackened side, with eerie melodic figures and a real sense of drifting out into the void. The chorus hook, such as it is, is less about something you sing back and more about a phrase that sits in the back of your skull: what if this empty nothingness is all there is.
Just when the wall-to-wall extremity threatens to become numbing, Ov Sulfur swing the pendulum. “Wither” is essentially a hard-rock ballad by their standards, and importantly, it’s one of the band’s first fully clean-sung tracks. The subject matter of losing grandparents, and the regret of things unsaid, is simple but effective, and the interplay between Hoover and Wilson’s voices gives the song a genuine emotional weight rather than feeling like a crass play for playlist slots. I will admit the metalcore gloss here will be too sweet for some deathcore purists, but on this album it functions as necessary contrast, not a sell-out moment.
Centre-piece “Evermore” is where all of the strands come together. It’s a mid-tempo, melodically driven track built around the question of whether eternal life might actually be a curse. The chorus is huge without being saccharine, the orchestration swells in exactly the right places, and underneath it all the rhythm section keeps everything heaving forward with enough grit that you never forget you’re listening to a metal band and not a film trailer. It’s one of those rare songs where the ambition and the execution match up.
The back half of “Endless” is where the guest list really kicks in, and where your mileage may vary depending on how you feel about feature-heavy records. “Dread” brings in Josh Davies from Ingested, and the result is every bit as savage as that pairing suggests: a constant barrage of self-sabotaging thoughts set to lurching rhythms and spiteful blasts, with Davies adding an extra layer of serrated hostility over one of the album’s nastiest breakdowns.
“Bleak” ups the ante again, this time with Johnny Ciardullo of Carcosa/AngelMaker in the mix. His presence nudges the song towards that ultra-modern, tightly locked groove that both of his main bands excel at, and it fits; the chorus in particular feels like the kind of hook that will level venues without sacrificing the song’s suffocating sense of despair. “A World Away” then turns the spotlight to Alan Grnja from Distant, and you can hear his influence in the way the song lumbers forward like a tank with huge, rolling mid-tempo riffs, more death-doom in its gait than pure deathcore, but still punctured by those characteristic Ov Sulfur melodic flourishes.
Finally, “Endless//Loveless” closes the record in fully melodic mode; no screams, just weary, beautifully phrased cleans over a restrained arrangement. It’s the emotional inverse of the opener that rather than blasting the door in, it quietly turns out the lights. It underlines the core thesis of the album: when connection evaporates, forever starts to look like a sentence, not a promise.
Which brings us to the obvious question: with three guest vocal spots on a ten-track record, does “Endless” risk becoming a showcase for everyone but Ov Sulfur at precisely the moment they should be demanding the full spotlight? In lesser hands, yes. Here, the band just about keep that balance on the right side of the line. The features are clustered on the back half, and they’re integrated into the emotional arc rather than feeling like random drops because each guest amplifies a specific facet of the record’s themes rather than simply piling on extra fire-power. At the same time, it’s telling that the songs that really linger with me are the ones where the band stand alone: “Seed”, “Forlorn”, “Vast Eternal”, “Evermore”, “Wither”.
From a commercial and scene-strategy perspective, those collaborations make absolute sense: they’re co-signs from key corners of the modern heavy landscape, and they will pull new ears into Ov Sulfur’s orbit. As a pure artistic statement, though, “Endless” is strongest when it trusts its own voice. The good news is that voice is now unmistakable. Between Hoover’s expanded range, Wilson’s increasingly confident clean work, Leviathvn’s blackened writing and Schroeder’s cavernous yet detailed production, what you come away with is not “a bunch of guests on a tidy deathcore record,” but a band who have taken a big thematic swing and largely connected.
For me, “Endless” delivers on the promise that had me chasing the album in the first place. It is heavy, sincere, occasionally over-the-top, and just ambitious enough to stand out in an overcrowded subgenre. The features may slightly blur the focus at times, but they don’t detract from the fact that Ov Sulfur have just put down a marker. If this is what their version of eternity sounds like, I’m happy to stay here a while longer.
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 16th January 2026
Label: Century Media Records
Tracklist:
- Endless//Godless
- Seed
- Forlorn
- Vast Eternal
- Wither
- Evermore
- Dread (feat. Josh Davies – Ingested)
- Bleak (feat. Johnny Ciardullo – Carcosa)
- A World Away (feat. Alan Grnja – Distant)
- Endless//Loveless
