Ne Obliviscaris released Citadel in North America on November 11, 2014. The Australian band’s second studio album was their first for Season of Mist, following 2012’s Portal of I. Six tracks housed three larger compositions, with the connections between their sections giving the record much of its character.
The opening “Painters of the Tempest” occupied roughly 23 minutes across three parts. Its central stretch, “Triptych Lux,” ran 16:35 and contained another three movements of its own. That scale left room for the band to develop ideas within a song before moving into another piece altogether. “Curator,” the third movement of “Triptych Lux,” also became the subject of an official music video released through Season of Mist in 2015.
Violinist and clean vocalist Tim Charles told No Clean Singing in 2014 that he thought of Portal of I as seven related stories. Citadel was conceived as a more continuous whole. The timetable had changed, too: the debut had taken nine years to emerge, while its follow-up came together in about 12 months. Charles credited their experience as writers with making that shorter window manageable. They trusted their own reactions to the material and let the direction develop through writing.
Charles’ violin and the two vocal styles could occupy the same passage. He explained that guitar riffs generally came first, giving him and harsh vocalist Xenoyr time to develop their parts. Sometimes they chose between ideas; sometimes they layered them. During recording, they joked about how often Xenoyr’s vocals appeared over Charles’ violin solos. “Whatever makes the song better,” Charles told the publication. The violin could share a passage with the vocals without waiting for a separate instrumental spotlight.
Making those overlapping parts work also meant arriving at the studio better prepared. Bassist Brendan Brown told Decibel in October 2014 that recording Portal of I had consumed substantial time and money. For Citadel, the members used their home recording setups for pre-production, building experience before the sessions and making more efficient use of studio time. Brown described their writing as a process that could begin with one member’s riff or a few sections, then develop through playing together. Complexity wasn’t a requirement they set before starting. Charles and Troy McCosker produced the album at Pony Music in Melbourne, with Jens Bogren handling the mix and mastering.
The record’s scale also accommodated passages with very few players. “Painters of the Tempest (Part III): Reveries from the Stained Glass Womb” used only acoustic guitar and violin. In a statement shared by Season of Mist before release, the band singled out that finale as a side of their writing they were especially proud of. Following the long, subdivided middle section, those two instruments had an entire track to themselves.
“Pyrrhic” connected that opening suite to the two-part “Devour Me, Colossus,” which closed the album. The running order kept its three larger works intact, carrying the record from one extended composition into the next.
In August 2024, Citadel returned as a digital tenth-anniversary edition remastered by Mark Lewis. Xenoyr also updated the artwork for that edition, revisiting the visual identity he had created for the original release.
