AN NCS PREMIERE: BOETHIAH — “DRIFTING INTO THE VOID”

Those of you who encountered the spine-shivering wonders of Boethiah‘s debut album, Invocation of the Xenolith, when it was released in the first month of this year may not be expecting new music from this two-man California band so soon, but new music is indeed what they’re now bringing us. On September 21st, a new six-track Boethiah EP named Celestial Gateway will be released on tape by Camo Pants Records and on CD by Rotted Life. We have one of those tracks to share with you today.

“Drifting Into the Void” is a prime example of Boethiah‘s unusual ability to integrate the revered HM-2-powered tone of Swedish death metal with alien musical ingredients that send the listener’s imagination out into the chilling vastness of the interstellar void. It’s not for naught that their music has been characterized as “an insidious integration of the past and the future”.

The haunted, reverberating notes and the haze of background distortion that begin the track, together with the mountainous drum and bass pounding, immediately manifest both the ominous mystery and the implacable hostility of deep space — and then the song kicks into a much more vicious gear, with seething, swarming riffs, battering percussion, and a hoarse, horrid voice uttering the lyrics in ghastly tones.

The band shift gears in the song repeatedly — galloping, rampaging, and lumbering like a wounded leviathan, while leaking an ooze of sickly melody, and then reviving the terrible wonders of the lights beyond our Sun through a freakishly arresting guitar solo. It’s quite a head-spinning track — gruesome death metal, to be sure, but with a frightening, hallucinatory atmosphere.

As noted, Celestial Voyage will be released through Camo Pants Records (Cassette & Digital) and Rotted Life Records (CD), and pre-orders are available now. The EP is recommended for fans of Dismember, Morbid Angel, Horrendous, and Fleshcrawl.

PRE-ORDER:
Digital and Cassette Tape:
https://camopantsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/celestial-gateway
CD:
https://www.rottedlife.com/product-page/boethiah-celestial-gateway-cdep

BOETHIAH:
https://boethiah.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/BoethiahBand/