On January 9th, 2024 internationally, W.T.C.Productions is proud to present Barshasketh‘s highly anticipated fifth album, Antinomian Asceticism, on CD and vinyl LP formats.
It’s been a long and winding road for Barshasketh – from their earliest days in 2007 as a solo project of Krigeist in his native New Zealand on to his relocation to Scotland and building an actual band, from breakout third album Ophidian Henosis in 2015 on to the even-mightier Barshasketh in 2019 – but even amidst all the lineup shuffles and geographical distance covered, one fact has remained firm: purest BLACK METAL, intentionally free of genre cross-pollination, chiseled and refined with patience and persistence. What stands upon that foundation after all these years is a monument to the boundless darkness and infinite imagination at the core of black metal, vital in 2024 as it would have been in 1994. Torches ablaze, hearts enflamed…eternal strife is the fuel.
Still, even with an iron-clad discography, Barshasketh are not ones to lazily rest on laurels even if considerable time passes between recordings. Witness Antinomian Asceticism, their first full-length in five years – and, eerily, fifth overall. Utterly refreshing upon pressing “play,” even with that time away, Barshasketh immediately explode into a jet-stream of velvety obsidian. It’s not inaccurate to call Antinomian Asceticism their most direct and concise record in many a year, but guiding that finely honed assault is their characteristic nightsky melodicism, which reaches a fever pitch here. Just like its all-too-considerable eponymous predecessor, Antinomian Asceticism‘s melding of mysticism and might evokes authentic, purple-blue visions of the late ’90s as soundly as it stands upon palatably modern ground. The difference here, perhaps, is that Barshasketh slice away some of the corridors of their usually labyrinthine songwriting and head straight toward the essence – austere, awe-inspiring, ASCETIC.
“Why Antinomian Asceticism?” asks guitarist / songwriter GM. “It’s important to disassociate this form of asceticism from Christian forms of asceticism, which are nihilistic (in the original, world-denying sense of the term) as well as the Socratic formulations of asceticism which anticipate St. Paul, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas. We reject the moral law, and ascetic practices that might be undertaken in order to satisfy any such Morality. I capitalize Morality here to emphasize that we are not referring to a mere system of values that might be arrived at by rational means, but a type of absolute morality that is received from God as formulated by the Kantian ethical notion of the categorical imperative – in other words, an eternal moral standard that cannot be questioned and applies uniformly across time and space.
“Before we lay out our reasoning as to why an antinomian form of asceticism might be beneficial,” he continues, “we would firstly like to appeal to the Schopenhauerian notion of the metaphysical will, which is a kind of inner essence that resides in all things – an idea which builds on the Kantian ‘thing-in-itself.’ This metaphysical will has certain drives associated with it, most relevant of which in this context is the drive to maintain oneself, replicate oneself, assert oneself (Kant also touched on these and refers to them as ‘inclinations’); these are concepts that anticipate Darwin and something Nietzsche would later build on. Schopenhauer viewed ascetic resignation as a means to make the world good by reaching some kind of status in which we are removed and numbed from it – our sense of the idea is that we need to find some sort of Aristotelian ‘golden mean’ in which we are not led around by our inclinations and metaphysical will, which leads to a shallow, reactive way of living which does not permit deep insight, yet also not radically separated from ‘this world.'”
Concluding, GM states, “Ascetic practice in our conception isn’t a conscious weakening or the self (via fasting, for instance) in order to satisfy a moral obligation, nor is it to enable some vain self-righteousness, but instead, it is a means by which we temporarily withdraw within in order to access insights which then strengthen the liberated individual in the real and this-worldly realm.”
In the meantime, hear the brand-new track “Radiant Aperture” here:
Cover artwork, courtesy of Rodrigo Pereira Salvatierra, and tracklisting are as follows:
Tracklisting for Barshasketh’s Antinomian Asceticism
I. Radiant Aperture
II. Nitimur in Vetitum
III. Lebenswelt Below
IV. Charnel Quietism
V. Phaneron Engulf
VI. Antinomian Asceticism
VII. Exultation of Ceaseless Defiance
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