Every religious tradition includes demons, as if their authors couldn’t conceive of human beings alone being capable of the evils they inflict upon each other. Better to ascribe those evils to inhuman spirits from which humanity might be saved by appeals to other (divine) spirits, rather than by finding and healing their own better spirits.
In Islamic scripture and culture, the most powerful and malicious demonic entities are called ifrit, sometimes described as ruthless chthonic spirits made of smoke and fire.
When you listen to the music of the New Zealand band Ifrit, it’s no wonder they chose that name. Their formulation of death metal is both malevolent and eldritch, an expression of eye-popping violence and soul-sinking misery that seems to strike from another world.
And hear it you shall (that’s an order!), because today we present one of the four songs on Ifrit‘s debut EP Haunting Charnel Grounds, which will be co-released on September 6th by Brilliant Emperor and Gutter Prince Cabal. The name of this terror is “Salts of Penitence“.
In only the first half-minute of this song Ifrit‘s music creates a mood that’s dismal and diseased, hulking and humongous. The gruesomely sizzling stringed instruments miserably groan and whine. The drums come down brutishly, like detonating armaments. The words are expelled in gritty but imperious roars.
And then, with a bridge made of feverishly convulsing fretwork, the song itself convulses in an outburst of hellish chaos, the drums going crazy in their upheavals, the guitars maniacally writhing and rapidly skittering, the vocals somehow even more ravenous and enraged. The lead guitar leads the music into even greater derangement, ecstatically swirling and screaming.
But the agony in the music oozes again, as shivering notes peal and quiver, like chimes that are carriers of disease from a netherworld of plague. It’s an uneasily mesmerizing interlude, but soon followed by a final terrorizing paroxysm, propelled to a zenith of exultant madness by a spiraling, swooping, and flash-fired guitar solo that revels in its derangement above the crashing churn.
Ifrit tell us this about the song’s inspiration:
“Salts of Penitence” is forsaken divinity. As a species we’ve grown to ignore our divine potential to spite ourselves; handfuls of dust, offered up in reverence of an impermanent system, grasping at patterns of meaning with no authenticity or true source”
Haunting Charnel Grounds will be released on LP vinyl, CD, and digital formats. For more info and to order the release, check the links below.
ORDER:
LP:
https://brilliantemperor.bandcamp.com/album/haunting-charnel-grounds
https://brilliantemperor.bigcartel.com/product/ifrit-haunting-charnel-grounds-etched-mlp-pre-order
CD:
https://ifritnz.bandcamp.com/album/haunting-charnel-grounds