AN NCS PREMIERE: INANNA — “FAR AWAY IN OTHER SPHERES”

Almost four years ago I finally came across the Chilean band Inanna. At that time the band’s latest release was their second album, 2012’s Transfigured in a Thousand Delusions, and it absolutely blew me away (as I wrote in one of our now-moribund Miscellany columns).

I lost track of the band after that, and I suppose for good reason because the only release that followed my discovery of Inanna was a 2020 live album. But now, a decade following Transfigured…, they have completed a third full-length named Void of Unending Depths that’s set for release on April 25th by Memento Mori. It’s an album you definitely will not want to miss, because it’s one of the best that death metal has offered in the year so far — and should rank highly at year-end too.

It was quite evident from Inanna‘s last album that their approach to death metal was in many ways unconventional. To be sure, you could detect the influence of such hallowed bands as Death and Morbid Angel, as well as the likes of Cynic, Pestilence, and Suffocation, but the band often veered off in unpredictable and adventurous directions that marked them as people who were still inclined to march to the beat of their own demented drummer. That’s even more evident on this new hour-long work.

Listening to the stunning song we’re premiering today proves the point. From the beginning, “Far Away In Other Spheres” booms and shivers, boils and screams, quickly creating an unnerving mood of unnatural madness. Deep devouring gutturals add to the music’s horrifying, nerve-twisting impact. Tension builds until the drums begin blasting and the tremolo’d riffing ascends to rarefied heights of electrifying insanity.

The chords blare and blaze, segmented by crashing cymbal detonations and hysterical screams, but without warning the band move into a haunting otherworld of sound, where glimmering guitar tones and gloomy but mercurial bass notes create a chilling but enthralling sense of mystery — and peril.

Fires of towering and turbulent madness burn again, but the song shifts into a murderous stomp as a prelude to a guitar solo that both supernaturally slithers and convulses in a fireburst of frightening ecstasy.

Somehow that song becomes strangely hypnotic despite how demented and otherworldly it sounds. If you become as transfixed by it as we wee, then be sure to check out the previously released track “Among Subaqueous Spectres“, which is every bit as thrilling and disconcerting. It races with all pistons firing in a fury, maniacally batters the spine, and the fretwork cavorts and careens in such exhilarating fashion that it may suck the wind from your lungs.

Like the track we’re premiering today, its rushing course is fast-changing and unpredictable. It has a crazed and clobbering ebullience, with darting angular arpeggios and wailing chords that are as splendid as they are sanity-threatening, backed by drumwork that’s off the chain. The solo in this one is even more mind-bending and magnificent, and the finale lifts right off the planet.

Well, don’t stop there. Now that you’re already off-planet, Inanna also give you “The Key to Alpha Centauri“, and you definitely don’t want to turn down the chance to make that weird and wondrous, shattering and spellbinding excursion:

The press materials tell us (and it’s entirely believable): “INANNA seek inspiration in the outer worlds and the obscure abysses of the unknown, via demented growls, the nightmarish writings of H.P. Lovecraft, mythology, and ancient lore. Malice, death, and insanity, the human mind, and Cthulhu spells also lurk deep within the band’s concept, like eerie sea tales from a distant century that one can only whisper in fear”.

Daniel Hermosilla is responsible for the completely fitting cover art. For more information about the release, check the links below.

https://www.memento-mori.es
https://www.facebook.com/memento.mori.label

https://www.facebook.com/inannametal
https://inannametal.bandcamp.com