AN NCS PREMIERE: IGNIS HAERETICUM — “LIFTING THE VEIL”

 

We are privileged to bring you the premiere of a song from the new album by the Colombian black metal occultists in Ignis Haereticum. Bearing the name Autocognition of Light, it will be released on December 1 by Goathorned Productions.

I have my friend Austin Weber to thank for turning me on to the terrible wonders of this band’s 2014 debut album, Luciferian Gnosis. In his review for us here, he described the album as “depraved and ferocious”, “off the beaten path and frighteningly dissonant”, “evil and twisted”, “a world of perplexing terror” that might be “the wisdom of a bright vision” or “madness in masquerade.”

 

 

The new album consists of six tracks, but it was conceived and written as a unified piece of music, manifesting two steps toward achieving a divine communion — “the purgative way“, which “deals with the active purification of the internal and external senses, the passions, the understanding and the will, through mortification and meditation”, followed by “the illuminative way“, “which is the recognition of ourselves, our nature, the state in which we are aware of our spirituality free of dogmas”. “Here our humanity loses all value and only remains our divine communion with the Light of knowledge, which is none other than the reflection of our own light that dwells in the depths of our consciousness.”

The first track to be revealed from the album was the opener, “Glorious Wounds“. As I wrote soon after first hearing it, consistent with the conception of “the purgative way” as a practice of mortification and meditation, there’s a current of violence in the hammering drums, the lashing dissonance of the riffs, and the blood-boiling bestiality of the growled vocals. Yet even in its most fevered minutes the music also has a trance-inducing quality, which becomes even more apparent as the pace slows, the chords ring out with a mystical resonance, and the drone of deep solemn voices can be heard.

 

 

“Lifting the Veil“, on the other hand, comes later in the album, followed only by the title track as the album closer. As Fr. D.M utters the near-chanted lyrical incantations in a full and harrowing growl, which rises in furious passion, the riffs hammer and slash, while tendrils of dissonant melody spiral like spectral flame… and meanwhile the drum attack is so blindingly-fast and brutally punishing that it threatens to suck all the air from your lungs.

The song is deeply unsettling, almost delirious in its wild explosiveness and mind-fracturing eeriness. But the furious pace does subside, the music transforming into a chilling hallucination, and then intensifying, with dissonant notes ringing out like a clarion call, and continuing to ring in infernal glory even as the music mounts again to a crescendo of orgiastic violence.

How such a shocking assault can at the same time  become entrancing is a mystery… but that’s what happens as Ignis Haereticum lift the veil in this song.

 

For further information about the release of Autocognition of Light, check the links below.  I’ve included a stream of “Glorious Wounds” along with our premiere of “Lifting the Veil“.

Pre-order:
https://ignishaereticum.bandcamp.com/album/autocognition-of-light
http://www.goathorned.bigcartel.com

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/ignis.haereticum/