Hammered Into Something Holy: MALAURIU - The Third Nail (Album Review) Released: 4/3/26

 

Sicily has always been a place where the sacred and the profane exist in uncomfortable proximity with blood-stained processions, and the lingering shadow of Aleister Crowley's Abbey of Thelema carved into the island's spiritual geography. It is exactly the kind of place that produces a band like MALAURIU. Founded in 2013 by Schizoid and now operating out of London, the project has spent over a decade shapeshifting through black metal, dark ambient, ritual noise, and punk while maintaining a consistent spiritual intensity that few bands in the extreme underground can match. With over twenty releases behind them, they arrive at The Third Nail not as a band still finding its footing, but as one that knows precisely what it wants to do and has the craft to do it without compromise.

Worth noting at the outset: at its core, MALAURIU is a two-piece. Schizoid handles guitars, and R.M. handles vocals. The album's remaining instrumentation, bass, drums, keyboards, samples, and additional guitar solos, was handled by a cast of session musicians assembled specifically for the record. That this feels like no limitation whatsoever is a testament to both the strength of the central creative vision and the caliber of the players brought in to realize it. The production, warm and organic without ever declawing the record's aggression, gives the compositions a depth that rewards repeated listens. This is black metal that breathes. The arrangements have genuine dynamic range, moving between suffocating density and unsettling atmospheric space in ways that feel intentional rather than accidental. Schizoid's guitar work is the backbone throughout, his riffs carrying the primitive ferocity the band has always prized while absorbing the punk-inflected edge that defines this record's particular character. R.M.'s vocals sit in that register where ritual incantation and outright hostility become indistinguishable from one another, which suits the material perfectly.

The tracklist moves with purpose. "Rising From The Cemetery" announces the record with the blunt confidence of a band that has nothing to prove and everything to say. "Empowerment Rites" and "Satanic Witch" lean into the album's occult momentum, the former featuring guest guitar solos that cut through the murk with unexpected precision. "Hell Mouth" and "The Curse of All Flesh" represent the record's darkest and most suffocating territory, the kind of tracks that feel less composed and more conjured. "Purple Ceremony" offers a brief but welcome shift in atmosphere before "Monotheistic Filth" arrives as one of the album's most savage and direct statements, its title doing exactly what it promises. The closer is where The Third Nail makes its most unexpected and effective move.

 A cover of GG Allin's "Abuse Myself, I Wanna Die" could read as a gimmick in lesser hands, but MALAURIU treats it as a genuine artistic statement, a collision point between black metal's ritual darkness and punk's self-destructive nihilism that turns out to be far less jarring than it sounds on paper. The guest appearances from Diego Do'Urden of Mystifier and Dr. Heathen Scum of the Mentors push the track into genuinely unhinged territory, and it earns every second of its chaos. It is the perfect ending for a record whose central thesis seems to be that the line between the sacred and the depraved was always thinner than anyone wanted to admit. Rooted in Sicilian folklore and the occult, driven by the singular vision of two core members who trust the right collaborators to fill the spaces around them, and sharpened with a punk aggression that feels entirely natural rather than borrowed, The Third Nail is MALAURIU's most complete and commanding work. It is ritualistic, hostile, and thoroughly alive. Seek it out preferably at volume, and preferably alone.

Check out their track Satanic Witch and see for yourself:

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