Today, Chaos Records announces August 19th as the international release date for The Sombre‘s highly anticipated third album, Monuments of Grief, on CD format.
The Sombre is the work of Maurice de Jong, insanely prolific mainman of Gnaw Their Tongues, De Magia Veterum, Cloak of Altering, Hagetisse, Golden Ashes, and countless others. With The Sombre, however, de Jong returns to his roots. Having spent his formative musical years in doom and doom-death metal bands (1989-1996: Atrocious, Cauteror, and Soulwound), de Jong here reimagines the sound of his youth: doom-death metal inspired by the “Peaceville Three” and other early ’90s doom/death pioneers.
The Sombre‘s debut album, Into the Beckoning Wilderness, was released in June 2019 in a strictly limited edition of 50 CD-Rs, which sold out immediately, of course. Fans of both his work in The Sombre and elsewhere, Chaos Records released a worldwide CD edition of Into the Beckoning Wilderness in March 2021, and now continues to foster than megaton-heavy sadness with the band’s brand-new third album, Monuments of Grief.
Almost too perfectly titled, Monuments of Grief is perhaps the most poignant distillation yet of The Sombre‘s heartwrenching style of doom-death. De Jong doesn’t step too far away from the miserable majesty of those preceding two records, but there’s an ever-so-slight expansion of atmosphere across Monuments of Grief, as the man expertly swathes his towering creations with subtle synth and plaintive piano, all while always allowing the CRUSH of sadness to wash over the listener. But, like those two preceding tomes, Monuments of Grief once again features a deftly finessed sense of space; the subterranean roar of de Jong’s voice plumbs deeper depths, but somehow with more clarity here. Most of all, de Jong’s melodies are more pronounced and earworming, evincing something of an early Katatonia vibe. All told, it’s another triumph of tragedy for The Sombre.
And, just like Chaos Records‘ well-received release of Into the Beckoning Wilderness, whether one chooses to drown in their sorrows or be emboldened by them with a suiting soundtrack is up to each individual. The Sombre will take you there either way as you contemplate these Monuments of Grief…
Begin contemplating with the brand-new track “From the Depths of Misery” here:
Preorder info can be found HERE. Cover and tracklisting are as follows:
Tracklisting for The Sombre’s Monuments of Grief
1. From The Depths Of Misery [6:27] 2. Alone in My Desolation [5:35] 3. The Mourning Gloom [6:38] 4. Monuments Of Grief [6:14] 5. When Death Comes I Will Be Beside You [6:39] 6. Paradise Regained [7:08]
Finnish funeral doom icons Shape of Despair are now premiering their entire new album ‘Return to the Void’. The record will be released tomorrow, February 25 via Season of Mist.
Listen to the new album here:
‘Return to the Void’ is available in the Season of Mist shop on CD and vinyl HERE. The album will be available on all digital streaming platforms tomorrow. Add the album to your library HERE
The cover artwork which was created by Mariusz Krystew. It can be found below together with the tracklist.
Tracklist: 1. Return To The Void (09:14) 2. Dissolution (08:59) 3. Solitary Downfall (11:06) 4. Reflection In Slow Time (08:08) 5. Forfeit (08:00) 6. The Inner Desolation (11:48) Total: 0:57:15
Finnish funeral doom icons SHAPE OF DESPAIR return from the wintry Nordic gloom on their new album, Return to the Void. Between the success of the majestically downtrodden Monotony Fields (2015) and today, the members of SHAPE OF DESPAIR have been composing (glacially) and otherwise ensconced writing/performing with their other projects like FINNTROLL, IMPALED NAZARENE, THROES OF DAWN, and COUNTING HOURS. The Finns have never been or found the need to be prolific, however. The race into the cold darkness is a contemplatively unhurried task. Return to the Void is musically and thematically that same journey, one of perpetual solitude and aching hopelessness, driven straight into the heart of frigid twilight. As ever, this is cheerless music for sunless days.
“Not long after Monotony Fields, I started composing for Return to the Void,” says guitarist/founding member Jarno Salomaa. “At first, the title song sounded too primitive. I thought I would make a solo album out of it, but after a while, the song reminded me of older RAVEN material. Naturally and eventually, it started to feel like a SHAPE OF DESPAIR song.”
SHAPE OF DESPAIR was formed out of the ashes of RAVEN in Helsinki in 1998. Actually, the transformation into the present-day moniker wasn’t as violent as it sounds. A simple name change—initiated by Salomaa—coincided with the Finns’ developing predilection for protracted if icy metal. SHAPE OF DESPAIR’s grand debut, Shades of… (2000), was proof that the fledgling sextet’s stately doom was already ascendant. From there, the Helsinkians morphed in membership but continued their funereal march into legend with Angels of Distress (2001) and Illusion’s Play (2004) before hibernating for almost a decade. While Return to the Void is the natural follow-up to Monotony Fields and represents over six years of songwriting development, the main narrative (and indeed the timely return of drummer Samu Ruotsalainen) is rooted in the past.
“Return to the Void isn’t the follow-up to Monotony Fields in the traditional sense,” Salomaa says. “As stated, the songwriting goes way back to the first music we put together for RAVEN. I will say my approach has changed after all these years of making music. I found new and different ways to shape the arrangements and my compositions. What matters most, I think, is that it still has the SHAPE OF DESPAIR atmosphere.”
Return to the Void is no doubt SHAPE OF DESPAIR. From the void-gaze of “Dissolution” and gelid beauty of “Reflection in Slow Time” to the collapsing cathedral in “Forfeit” and the void-fall that is the stunning title track, the Finns have outdone themselves, overcoming the heights of previous lighthouse tracks “Woundheir,” “Angels of Distress,” and “Sleep Mirrored” with surprising ease. Funeral doom is often narrow in scope, but Return to the Void defiantly opposes that with its massively scaled and forlornly inspired valleys and angelic (powered by Natalie Koskinen’s empyrean vocals) peaks. Coupled with Henri Koivula’s caliginous lyrics, SHAPE OF DESPAIR provides a masterclass display of a genre expansive and filmic.
“Return to the Void is a title we thought would best describe the album,” says Koivula. “It is a return for us in many ways. We were heading [musically] towards early SHAPE OF DESPAIR. Plus, Samu’s back in the band. Overall, my lyrics have a red line through them—a sense of solitude and depression. The state where you find that everything has lost its meaning. There is no past or future, only this one moment drifting near the firmament.”
The Return to the Void project started in 2020 and continued through May 2021. Production duties were wrested from the previous producer Max Kostermaa and in-sourced to the band directly. Ruotsalainen, Salomaa, Koivula, and Miika Niemelä engineered, respectively, at Beat Domination Studios, D-Studios, and Doom Cave Studios. The group also looked inside their ranks for mixing, handing the job off to [drummer] Ruotsalainen (FINNTROLL, METSATÖLL). The mastering was given to award-winning ace Svante Forsbäck (VOLBEAT, RAMMSTEIN) at Chartmakers West in Espoo. If the previous SHAPE OF DESPAIR productions were huge, Return to the Void is unfathomably massive. One listen to “Solitary Downfall” and the album’s crushing egress “The Inner Desolation,” and it’s readily apparent that SHAPE OF DESPAIR have crafted a temple of sound to ruminate the cruelty of existence.
“We recorded the album on our own, which allowed us the freedom to record whenever and however long we wanted,” says Salomaa. ”Everything was done in late winter, with the mixing taking place between February and March of 2021. We had a couple of weekends to mix with Samu, but most of it was done without us. The mastering was then finalized in May 2021. [The sound is] mainly raw but still heavy. The main focus was to keep our sound world intact. I think this album sounds the most accurate we’ve ever wanted our albums to sound.”
SHAPE OF DESPAIR’s next steps are to release Return to the Void via Season of Mist. The striking cover art via long-time design partner and silent member Mariusz Krystew (David Galas, Thor’s Hammer) is yet again a reminder that the Finns are as visually engaging as they are compositionally and lyrically. That they mixed old and new for Return to the Void is proof that there’s purpose and meaning to Salomaa’s ill-lit aesthetic. Once the album is released and protocols pending, Shape of Despair hope to hit the road where they’ll pontificate their wintry despondency from the stage to audiences near and far.
On December 3rd internationally, Personal Records is proud to present Clouds‘ highly anticipated sixth album, Despărțire, on CD format with exclusive bonus track.
Clouds was born out of grief and loss, a story like so many others of this kind. However, the music is what remains of this whole process of having to lose the ones we love. The music speaks of it; it carries the soul to another world where sadness, grief, and pain are no more.
Clouds was created by Daniel Neagoe in 2012, and the following year saw the birth of its first album, Doliu (Romanian for “Mourning”). The album was amazingly received by both media and the public and saw the start of the band’s ascension.
In the years to come, Clouds released several albums and made its first live appearances, gathering members from Shape Of Despair, Funeral, and Pantheist and participating in the world’s most dedicated festivals, both indoor and outdoor, such as Doom Over London, Doom Over Kiev, Dutch Doom Days, Doom Over Bucharest, Gothoom, Doom Over Vienna, and headlining shows in special locations, such as the Amuz Cathedral and Valkenburg cave.
In early 2021, Clouds partnered with Personal Records to have their back catalog properly reissued, as every other CD released to this day had only been self-released by the band and in limited quantities (and thus went for insane collector’s prices). First came the pair of Dor (2018) and Doliu (2014), and then followed the pair of Destin (2017) and Departe (2016). Now arrives the release of Clouds’ brand-new sixth album, Despărțire (Romanian for “Separation”), which Personal will release with an exclusive bonus track. Further consolidating Clouds’ position as the leading atmospheric funeral doom-death band, Despărțire is arguably their most heartfelt album yet, continuing their legacy where they left off with last year’s Durere. What’s more, Despărțire features guest appearances by My Dying Bride’s Aaron Stainthorpe on “In Both Our Worlds The Pain is Real” and Antimatter’s Mick Moss on “This Heart, A Coffin.”
As longtime fans of the band, Personal Records is honored to be working again with Clouds for this special release of Despărțire. Preorder info can be found HERE. Cover and tracklisting are as follows:
Tracklisting for Clouds’ Despărțire 1. Deepen This Wound 2. This Heart, A Coffin (feat. Mick Moss) 3. Your Name In My Flesh 4. In Both Our Worlds The Pain Is Real (feat. Aaron Stainthorpe) 5. The Door We Never Opened 6. A Place For All Your Tears 7. See The Sky With Blind Eyes 8. Untitled (bonus track)
Today, epic doom upstarts Flame, Dear Flame stream the entirety of their highly anticipated debut album, Aegis. Set for North American release on August 6th via Eisenwald, hear Flame, Dear Flame‘s Aegis in its entirety here:
In the year 2017 in the north-central German city of Brunswick, the covenant of Flame, Dear Flame was invoked. Providing a staggering take on the most epic form of what can loosely be categorized as doom metal, Flame, Dear Flame manage to fuse a sonic palette that features delicate, melancholy sections of clean guitars and restrained percussion with monumental, crushing epic doom. On their debut album, Aegis, Flame, Dear Flame have erected a truly distinct sound, characterized by the stirring performance of vocalist Maren Lemke, whose simultaneously airy-yet-powerful voice fuses with the memorable riff-craft on display to create seven towering tracks that are sure to capture the ears of listeners eager to hear an innovative take on a genre that too often conforms to stereotypes.
Aegis is a work thematically divided into two parts. The first part, entitled “The Millennial Heartbeat,” details the genesis of the ocean and the thanatography of the land, a testimony of the forces of nature and its frailty alike, performed in three movements and featuring a classical epic doom approach, rife with gargantuan riffs and percussion as well as soaring clean vocals, yet interspersed with thoughtfully placed and paced clean sections. Serving as a contrasting and complementary second part of the album, “The Wolves and the Prioress” consists of four movements focusing more on acoustic folk elements, further enriching Flame, Dear Flame‘s engrossing sound, and details the story of a feral child that falls into the custody of a sage prioress.
All of these elements result in a unique combination of righteous doom and subtle-yet-noble acoustic folk. Each track is accompanied by a visual representation composed by Karmazid. The culmination of the album’s visuals is its stark cover artwork, laden with elegant symbolism in rich detail, created by Kodex Barbaricus. According to the band, Aegis will be presented in full at Storm Crusher Festival as soon as rescheduling due to the pandemic permits.
Aforementioned cover art and tracklisting are as follows:
Tracklisting for Flame, Dear Flame’s Aegis 1. The Millennial Heartbeat Part I 2. The Millennial Heartbeat Part II 3. The Millennial Heartbeat Part III 4. The Wolves and the Prioress Part I 5. The Wolves and the Prioress Part II 6. The Wolves and the Prioress Part III 7. The Wolves and the Prioress Part IV
Today, Chaos Records announces September 10th as the international release date for a special split album between Grim Fate and The Sombre, From Ancient Slumber / The Horrid Silence Thus Began, on CD format. Featuring two still-young titans of doomed-out death metal, this split album features three exclusive tracks from both bands, with Grim Fate‘s half titled From Ancient Slumber and The Sombre‘s The Horrid Silence Thus Began.
Hailing from the Netherlands, Grim Fate was formed in 2017 by Wim and Pier to create some dark, brutal, and doomy death metal. The both of them started spreading their ideas and composing full force. Influenced by the old Finnish scene and bands like Incantation, they tried to create their own brand of dark death metal. After the release of the Emerging From the Crypt EP, Philippus joined the band. The first result of this new lineup was a split 7″ with Putrevore and, soon after that, the debut full-length Perished in Torment in 2020. With more momentum and growing compositional prowess, the power-trio here deliver three gutted & gargantuan tracks, their doom vibes less catatonic and more like slow-rolling dread. Then again, given their native land’s proud lineage of doomy death, this growing supremacy should not be surprising…
The Sombre is the work of Maurice de Jong, insanely prolific mainman of Gnaw Their Tongues, De Magia Veterum, Cloak of Altering, Hagetisse, Golden Ashes, and countless others. With The Sombre, however, de Jong returns to his roots. Having spent his formative musical years in doom and doom-death metal bands (1989-1996: Atrocious, Cauteror, and Soulwound), de Jong now reimagines the sound of his youth: doom-death metal inspired by the “Peaceville Three” and other early ’90s doom/death pioneers. As The Sombre, he released two super-limited albums – Into the Beckoning Wilderness in 2019 (which Chaos Records reissued in a much-wider edition in March 2021) and 2020’s Shapeless Misery – and now delivers his first new tracks since then. Just as cathartic as ever, this trifecta of tracks is wide open, in every sense of the word: space, atmosphere, paradoxically crushing heaviness, and indeed most of all, heart-torn-open emotion. Truly, The Sombre‘s more traditional death-doom sound is a perfect complement to Grim Fate‘s slo-mo bulldozing.
Totaling 43 minutes, From Ancient Slumber / The Horrid Silence Thus Began is a crucial work for fans of both Grim Fate and The Sombre as well as any maniacs into death metal’s most doomed landscapes.
In the meantime, hear two brand-new tracks from the split – Grim Fate‘s “Corpse Eater” and The Sombre‘s “The Horrid Silence Thus Began” – here:
Preorder info can be found HERE. Cover and tracklisting are as follows:
Tracklisting for Grim Fate and The Sombre’s From Ancient Slumber / The Horrid Silence Thus Began
1. GRIM FATE – Corpse Eater [6:38] 2. GRIM FATE – Smoarige Fine [10:46] 3. GRIM FATE – From Ancient Slumber [5:53] 4. THE SOMBRE – Above th’ Aonian Mount [6:23] 5. THE SOMBRE – His Pride Had Cast Him Out From Heav’n [7:23] 5. THE SOMBRE -The Horrid Silence Thus Began [5:40]
Today, long-running doom-death masters Majestic Downfall premiere the new track “A Dying Crown” . The track is the second to be revealed from the band’s highly anticipated sixth album, Aorta, set for international release on May 21st via Personal Records. Hear Majestic Downfall‘s “A Dying Crown” in its entirety here:
One of the leading doom-death bands in Latin America with full exposure in the international underground, Majestic Downfall started as a one-man doom journey in August 2006. The idea was to recapture the feeling of the ’90s European death-doom metal scene while mixing it with some more modern metal overtones. In 2007, Majestic Downfall pressed its first demo, The First Abyss Demo 2007, and it contained three songs of melodic-yet-mournful doom.
The year 2009 saw the release of Majestic Downfall‘s debut album, Temple of Guilt, via My Kingdom Music in Europe and Concreto/Personal Records in America. This time, the music contained a darker edge full of sorrow and new influences from bands like Shining and Forgotten Tomb. Temple of Guilt certainly placed Majestic Downfall in the doom/dark metal scene.
The Blood Dance appeared in 2011, Three in 2013, and the split with The Slow Death from Australia in 2014, all of them containing thicker productions, more experimentation, but still keeping the core sound and roots of Majestic Downfall. By now, it was clear the band was a hard working one.
In 2015, Majestic Downfall released …When Dead, one of the band’s most diverse albums, and for the first time, they had an important backing label, which was none other than the mighty Pulverised Records. This release allows the band to tour for the first time on European soil with known bands of the genre like Ophis (Germany) and Ataraxie (France). Majestic Downfall also plays as the first Mexican band ever to do so on the world-renowned 70000 Tons of Metal cruise, a headlining show in New York City, and to headline one of the stages on Force Fest Mexico with bands like Slayer, Carcass, Pestilence, and many more.
Waters of Fate came to life in 2018 via Weird Truth/Solitude/Chaos Records, and the band does a 14-date trek through Canada and concluding it by playing Maryland Death Fest. Also that same year, 2019, Majestic Downfall play the Domination Fest in Mexico City and Mexico Metal Fest in Monterey, Mexico, where the world’s most important bands once again gather.
During the Pandemic, Majestic Downfall write and record their latest album, Aorta. Comprising four songs in an epic 70 minutes, there are no taboos now, no rules or anything: the band is just recording the music they love, no matter where it comes from. It is still doom and always will be, but with every release, there just happens to be much more, and Aorta is a perfect example, going from suffocating to vibrating, damning to liberating, utterly devastated to strangely hopeful – but always CRUSHING, and devastatingly so.
Credit for that goes to the mixing & mastering courtesy of Tore Stjerna at Necromorbus Studio, who has worked with Watain, Mayhem, Desultory, Ondkapt, Valkyrja, and many, many more. The stark yet mysteriously beautiful cover artwork was done by Oscar de las Flores, who has nothing to do with metal, and that surely gives Aorta a different vibe. Majestic Downfall return, mightier and more majestic/miserable than ever…bleed through Aorta.
Begin bleeding with the previously revealed opening track “Roberta” HERE at Personal Records‘ Bandcamp, where the album can also be preordered. Aforementioned cover art and tracklisting are as follows:
Tracklisting for Majestic Downfall’s Aorta
1. Roberta 19:40 2. A Dying Crown 13:12 3. Aorta 16:48 4. Become Eternal 19:03
Today, Iron Bonehead Productions announces May 28th as the international release date for Cross Vault‘s highly anticipated third album, As Strangers We Depart, on CD and vinyl LP formats.
Slowly yet surely, Cross Vault have built a small-yet-stellar canon of releases that are extremely personal in nature and absolutely poignant in execution and effect. After two acclaimed cult albums – Spectres of Revocable Loss and The All-Consuming in 2014 and 2015, respectively – Cross Vault joined with Iron Bonehead for the release of a special mini-album, Miles to Take, released in late 2016. Although “just” two songs, this epic short-length was a transitional record in more ways than one: the quintet had solidified its lineup after two members had graduated from “session” status, and the sum result suitably proved stunning, showing how far they could stretch their Viking doom sound whilst keeping it fiercely focused. Cross Vault were on the march…
Alas, quality of such a standard is not an overnight matter, and time did pass…now nearly five years since the release of that last, tantalizing EP. Cross Vault return, mightier and more majestic than ever, with As Strangers We Depart. Right from the opening notes, this is the goosebump-inducing Cross Vault many have come to cherish as the metal underground’s most overlooked masters: solemn, steady, sweepingly stoic, but stirring the emotions and indeed the heartstrings like few others can these days. The formula hasn’t changed across As Strangers We Depart so much as the bravado and confidence in which Cross Vault dole out these seven towering hymns. Viking-era Bathory is still a touchstone, as are Solstice and Minotauri, but where the battlefield has gone bloodied but silent, the quintet explore the solemn aftermath with devastating dynamics. Not that Cross Vault‘s third album is merely an exercise in loud/quiet cliche; rather, delicate nuance has taken center stage with As Strangers We Depart, giving the record the overarching air of Viking funeral or simply a lament for lost times. And when that characteristic heaviness at last arrives, indeed is it the thunder of the gods…
Classic doom METAL is a very heavy, and very human, realm. Cross Vault roam that field of experience with a pathos and bathos that’s blanching to behold, and none more so than As Strangers We Depart: without a doubt, a great work of ages!
Hear (and see) for yourself with the brand-new video “Gods Left Unsung” here:
cover and tracklisting as follows:
Tracklisting for Cross Vault’s As Strangers We Depart 1. Golden Mending [8:43] 2. The Unknown Rewinds [7:40] 3. Gods Left Unsung [6:39] 4. Other Rivers [7:21] 5. Ravines [1:29] 6. As Strangers We Depart [6:47] 7. Silent Wastes Untrod [4:42]
Today, Helter Skelter Productions (distributed & marketed by Regain Records) announces April 11th as the international release date for Neromega’s striking debut mini-album, Nero Omega, on CD and 12” vinyl formats.
Neromega is a gathering of Italian musicians from Rome who have been active for over 25 years in different bands and musical contexts, yet knew each other since the mid ‘90s and always shared a passion for a certain kind of musical vibe/themes and high-quality songwriting.
Neromega’s debut mini-album, Nero Omega, was initially released in October 2020 on cassette tape in limited quantities, and now Helter Skelter are releasing it on a worldwide scale. And for good reason: Neromega meet at the crossroads of early Black Sabbath, Italian doom, and progressive/psychedelic rock of old. Yet, they find their own unique path by being more than a sum of their elements, their sound equally reeking of doom, Italian giallo/noir/horror morbidity, and Covid-19. With Nero Omega will one find three original songs and a cover of Balletto di Bronzo’s “Un posto,” all of it wrapped in the dulcet tones of their native tongue. The 25 minutes of Nero Omega are but a taste of Neromega’s forthcoming debut album.
In the meantime, stream Neromega in its entirety here:
cover and tracklisting as follows:
Tracklisting for Neromega’s Nero Omega 1. Solitudine [8:02] 2. Pugnale Adore [6:36] 3. Morte Nella Fede [4:31] 4. Un Posto [4:52]
Today, Iron Bonehead Productions sets November 6th as the international release date for Bloodsoaked Necrovoid‘s highly anticipated debut album, Expelled into the Unknown Depths of the Unfathomable, on CD and vinyl LP formats.
Hailing from Costa Rica, Bloodsoaked Necrovoidformed in 2018 and quickly set to work on their first recordings. Two demos followed that year, which were later compiled onto vinyl format as Apocryphal Paths Of The Ancient 8th Vitriolic Transcendence via Iron Bonehead in early 2019. Later that year came a limited promo/rehearsal recording a split tape with Ratlord. Through all these suffocating recordings, the duo built a smokestack of charred DEATH so impossibly bleak as to be unbearable. And now, they eclipse that feat with their long-awaited, literally-massive debut album…
Aptly fucking titled, Expelled into the Unknown Depths of the Unfathomable is the no-hope/no-fun churn of sepulchral doom-death turned completely inside out. More crushingly suffocating than previous recordings and yet somehow emitting a massive sense of space that punctures through the veil of complete atmosphere, Bloodsoaked Necrovoid here drag the listener kicking & screaming (slooowwwly) through the caverns below the caverns of the mind/subconscious/spirit and then spit blood and bile across the putrid pile. It’s a six-song/41-minute experience that seems to last for infinity but just as effortlessly retains a sulfurous urgency seemingly at odds with its guttural slo-motion grind, surprisingly kicking into gutsfucking gallops that sound like bestial metal dragged through tar. Unknown and unfathomable are their ways, and expelled you most certainly will be!
Bloodsoaked Necrovoid will ruin your day, again and again and again, and there’s no sweet succor when one’s Expelled into the Unknown Depths of the Unfathomable.
Begin expulsion with the brand-new track “Viciously Consumed by the Unfolding Unknown” here:
Tracklisting for Bloodsoaked Necrovoid’s Expelled into the Unknown Depths of the Unfathomable 1. Dispossessed in an Asphyxiating Endless Darkness 2. Perverted Astral Intoxication for a Death Incarnation 3. Viciously Consumed by the Unfolding Unknown 4. Inescapable Transferance of Profane Malignity 5. Existential Dismemberment by a Transcendental Nothingness 6. Traversing the Threshold of a Treacherous Depraved Absolute
Today, black/death/doom titans Vassafor stream the entirety of their highly anticipated third album, To the Death. Set for international release on August 7th via Iron Bonehead Productions, hear Vassafor‘s To the Death in its entirety here:
Vassafor should need no introduction. For the past decade and a half, since the band’s reactivation with their Demo II in 2005, this New Zealand cult have patiently plied their idiosyncratic craft, pushing the boundaries of black and death metal ever further whilst driving deep into each’s collective core. Although some will argue that they reached their apotheosis with 2012’s debut album, Obsidian Complex – a true, two-disc double album – Vassafor played their most daring hand with respective split LPs with comrades Sinistrous Diabolus and Temple Nightside (both released by Iron Bonehead in 2014 and 2015, respectively). In miniature, these works amplified the simultaneously world-eating/ethereal textures that lay at the heart of the Vassafor aesthetic. After an intense two years in the shadows, their grandest work so far was revealed: Malediction, released in October 2017 on vinyl and cassette via Iron Bonehead. Vassafor continued to cement their legend…
Vassafor are not ones for half-measures. For them, their spirituality is Satanic and absolute: no compromise, no quarter. Thus, with the aptly titled To the Death do Vassafor render their most direct statement yet, yet one also imbued with a lurking strangeness that’s entirely their own. At once submerging into the murkiest depths of the underground from whence they sprang, in other senses smothering those senses with a serpentine flow that’s stultifying to behold, the seven sonic incantations comprising the 66-minute To the Death prove that the duo indeed are ever able to conjure horrifying new shapes stitched from the fabric of the ancients. Not for nothing is this third full-length titled as such: To the Death bespeaks Vassafor‘s own path – theirs, and theirs literally ALONE – that is verily “Archaic Black Metal that exists outside time.” Any band would kill to write songs as mesmerizing ‘n’ monolithic as the opening 12-minute title track, or the ten-minute self-explanatory “Eyrie,” or especially the 17-minute, likewise self-explanatory closer “Singularity”…and that’s barely half the album.
Vassafor exist on their own terms, and we can only help but bear witness to their black magick. To the Death is a statement of intent, a world unto itself, and so much more: bow, enter, die.
Cover and tracklisting are as follows:
Tracklisting for Vassafor’s To the Death 1. To the Death [12:03] 2. Egregore Rising [7:36] 3. Eyrie [10:35] 4. Black Talon [2:13] 5. The Burning íthyr [9:17] 6. Emanations from the Abyss [6:13] 7. Singularity [17:56]
