The band has a rich catalog with over a decade since their debut album “Blinding the Masses” in 2010. In the years since, Scarab have built a discography that includes “Serpents of the Nile” (2015) and “Martyrs of the Storm” (2020), the latter featuring collaborations with Karl Sanders of Nile and Joe Haley of Psycroptic. They were also the first Egyptian extreme metal act to perform internationally, appearing at Dubai Desert Rock, With Full Force in Germany, and Bloodstock Open Air in the UK. That history matters here because “Transmutation of Fate” doesn’t feel like a band still finding its footing. It feels like a band cashing in on everything they’ve built.
The EP begins with “Vow of the Sphinx (Abo El-Houl)”, a powerful declaration of the solemn duty of the immortal guard of the pyramids. The song itself starts with a chant in ancient Egyptian, which immediately grabs your attention and lets you know you’re about to be taken on a journey inside Egyptian mythology and/or the band’s interpretation of it. The main vocalist, I believe, is meant to embody the sphinx itself as he shifts from English to Arabic lyrics and follows up with “By the vow of the sphinx I speak in countless tongues” while the ancient Egyptian lines are uttered by the “priests” or back-up vocals, which become a recurring element across the EP that establishes the ritualistic atmosphere.
Next is “Hands from the Sun (Amon)”, which solidifies the alchemical themes of the EP as Amon himself delivers a monologue referencing “As Above So Below” and the transmutation process of light emerging from darkness. The connection between the spiritual and physical realm was a lot more prominent in ancient mythologies than it is in our current modern times, and though we pretend we are now superior for shedding it, we have lost a great deal alongside those ties with the spiritual.
In “Epistle of Secrets (Creators of III)” and “Monarch of Violence (Oriasirius)”, the riffs become more ominous and aggressive to reflect the authoritarian tyranny of the monarch of violence. Blast beats and dissonant chords aplenty while the lyrics approach cosmic horror territory as they describe this immortal vessel’s plans to take apart the world and transmutate it into a different world entirely, wholly unknown to us.
The infrastructure behind this release should finally give Scarab‘s mythology the international reach it has always deserved. The ritualistic framework, the multilingual vocal layering, the cinematic orchestration courtesy of Sammy Sayed – this is a band operating at the peak of what they do. “Transmutation of Fate” is a dense, rewarding EP that demands repeated listens, and given the ambition on display, the full-length that follows this will be worth watching closely.
