Today, Spirit Coffin Publishing announces October 15tth as the international release date for Zetar‘s striking debut album, Devouring Darkness, on CD, vinyl LP, and cassette tape formats.
Named for a planet of telepaths who’d transcended into a roaming mass of pure psychic energy to curtail their own meteoric extinction, sci-fi themed black/death metal trio Zetar initially formed in 2019 as a solo act via Austin, Texas-area musician R.G., who’d forgo the public demo process in favor of developing recording and compositional skills in private alongside a host of talented international conspirators. The circle was complete with the addition of French vocalist T.P. and relentless Ecuadoran drummer David Lamas, both of whom add their own extra-dimensional touch of madness and malevolence to the album’s living and breathing psychic mass.
Seeking to graft their collective disembodied consciousness onto new hosts, the trio present Devouring Darkness as a trance of transitive black and death metal properties, exposing fresh mythos and mystery within our undiscovered infinitum. Computer gods! Universal evils! Mind-rending telepathic control! Serpentine melodies and jagged riffs intertwine to power all warp coils through these eight steadily bounding expeditions: All horrors (and wonders) beyond are revealed via this oddity of unclear influences, which range from classics of ’90s death metal, synth-laden and thrashing black metal, and classic science fiction scores.
Invoking the names of artists as vastly different as Michael Schenker Group, Blood Incantation, Immortal, and Acheron as just a few shades of vast influence, R.G.’s work isn’t focused on emulating current or past greats: “My drive was to challenge myself to do something I’ve never done before. In the process of discovery, my guitar playing improved; I began playing bass, and started working with analog synth. This ultimately tapped into creativity that I hadn’t found in years – I went to college to be an artist, then a writer. It was never about being more brutal or heavy than anyone else, but to capture the music that was in my head, something that I wasn’t really hearing from other bands.”
The artist’s ethos also seeks to capture the true, tangible essence of heavy metal recordings to some degree, choosing to forego muddy down-tuning, direct-input recording, and any artificial pace-keeping: “Overall, I wanted the album to have a bit of a nasty, gritty, filthy, underground vibe to it. I didn’t want it to be too clean, sanitized, and sterile like a lot of ‘perfect’-sounding modern extreme metal albums. I believe metal should have some of that element, though it shouldn’t be a distraction.” The result is an out of-this-world yet entirely carbon-based species of black/death metal.
Hear for yourself with the brand-new track “Lights of Zetar” here:
Cover artwork, courtesy of Bruce Pennington, and tracklisting are as follows:
Tracklisting for Zetar’s Devouring Darkness
1. Devouring Darkness
2. Return to Talos IV (The Cage)
3. Demons of Darkness and Air
4. Portal Six-Three
5. Lights of Zetar
6. Landru
7. Orbital Decay
8. Ardra (Great Deceiver)
MORE INFO:
www.facebook.com/lightofzetar
www.spiritcoffinpublishing.bigcartel.com
www.spiritcoffinpublishing.bandcamp.com