AN NCS PREMIERE: ISRATHOUM — “ALLEVIATE, ELEVATE”

Antru Kald is the name of the new three-song EP by the Portuguese/Dutch band Israthoum. Ever since discovering their phenomenal 2012 album Black Poison and Shared Wounds, Israthoum has become a favorite of this site, and today we have the privilege of premiering one of the new songs from Antru Kald: “Alleviate, Elevate”.

Antru Kald is a conceptual creation, one that has been gestating for many years, and it was recorded over a multi-year period as well, with help from Mories of Gnaw Their Tongues and Cloak of Altering (whose projects also happen to be favorites of this site). Mories also created the EP’s cover art.

“Alleviate, Elevate” is the first of the three tracks, and it is followed by “The Viperine-Hued Sphere” and “Deathmask’s Inheritor”. The ambient sounds at the beginning of the song waste no time spinning your mind into a different dimension, one that is chilling and fraught with peril. And that sensation of plunging through a doorway into a different world becomes even more intense when the song explodes in a maelstrom of whirling, distorted riffs, methodical percussive hammer blows, and harrowing yells and shrieks.

The music grows increasingly frenzied and oppressive, a dense storm of sound that changes course without warning, sometimes in an unpredictable, lightning-quick, stop-start jolt. There’s a demonic viciousness in this rampage, the vocals becoming even more unrestrained in their harrowing passion, the hurricane of noise becoming even more intense and destructive. Yet at the same time the band are building an atmosphere that is esoteric and otherworldly. It gets you in its clutches, and pulls you back, again and again.

Antru Kald was mastered by Kark of DØDSENGEL and will be released by Daemon Worship Productions on Walpurgis (April 30) in a trifold digisleeve, and eventually as a one-sided MLP with a laser etching. For information about how to pre-order the release, watch these spaces:

https://daemonworship.bandcamp.com/album/antru-kald
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Israthoum-official/108606202562464
https://www.facebook.com/daemonworship