Today we revisit the Dutch band Alburnum, whose 2022 debut album Buitenlucht proved to be a multi-faceted, soul-shaking, and intensely memorable first step. The occasion for our reunion with them is their completion of a follow-up album, The Withered Roots of Reality, which is now set for release on July 20th.
As you will know if you encountered Buitenlucht, Alburnum infuse their black metal with folk instrumentation and a reverence for musical traditions far older than the musical evolutions that produced the varying tropes of black metal as we’ve come to know them. They do it again on the new album, but have created even more ambitious and dynamic arrangements, a progression that is still inspiring and intensely moving but even more fascinating — as you shall discover today through our premiere of a song from the new album named “On the Bones of Pilgrims“.
The lyrics to this new song are eloquent and evocative, but the imagery is harrowing. The words portray a decaying, ages-old fortress built upon the bones of pilgrims, a “sanctum of lost souls”, a living tomb that holds the bones of the damned: “Their stone faces smiling / For they don’t know they are dead / Entombed eternally / In their castles up high”. The narration ends this way:
Laughing silently
In their palace of rot and grime
The sky is falling
Our bridges are burning
The walls are crumbling
And the fortress comes tumbling down
In the song, those words are voiced in extravagant roars and scorching screams, furious and tormented in their tones. Torment veins the music as well, in the piercing yet disturbing melody that opens the track and then slithers and seethes its way forward above enormous bass lines and pounding percussion.
The instrumentation pitches the melody to greater heights of agonized desperation, and the rhythmic pulse throbs with greater furor, but the band also adapt and evolve the melody, bringing in the old folk traditions we’ve mentioned; it begins to sound like a forlorn dance, one that spins up into a painful delirium, accompanied by choral chants.
A rippling solo picks up the dance, and as it whirls, the music as a whole elevates into a plane of ravaged grandeur.
As we’ve already come to expect from Alburnum, the new song is a musical tapestry, moving and memorable, as it both scars the senses with its distress and tunnels backward through time.
ALBURNUM is:
D.B. – lead vocals, electric guitars, acoustic guitars, bass, mandolin, accordion, keyboards, percussion
R.v.R. (session) – drums, choir vocals
The Withered Roots of Reality was mixed by fellow Dutch craftsman W. Damiaen (Laster) at Catacomben Studios and it was mastered by J.B. van der Wal (Dool). The cover art and logo were created by Viral Designs.
The album will be released on limited CD, cassette tape, and digital formats, and it’s recommended for fans of Windir, Agalloch, and Horn. Check out the links below for pre-orders and more info, and also listed to the album’s previously released title song, which was presented with this description:
Fittingly revealed on the date of the pagan May Day festival, “The Withered Roots of Reality” focuses on the presence of ancient folklore and mysticism in modern, fast paced life; all but hidden from superficial observation, yet all around us if one knows where to look. A personal narrative about looking past the veil of society for guidance, shedding past trauma and slowly adapting to a world indifferent to your kind.
PRE-ORDER:
https://alburnum.bandcamp.com/album/the-withered-roots-of-reality
FOLLOW:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alburnum_bm/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AlburnumBM