(written by Islander)
Detest the Sun is a Louisiana-based one-man project started by Howl in 2023, devoted to “the true spirit of southern melodic black metal”. Following a two-song demo self-released last April, Detest the Sun will now see the release by Void Wanderer Productions of the project’s first album (or EP, depending on how you consider a half-hour runtime).
The new record is named Moonspells and Everlasting Sorrow, and Void Wanderer portrays it in these terms:
“As darkness claims over the Earth, with it Detest the Sun unleashes its debut album of pure cold, melancholic grimness. With the beauty of melody behind the ice, wielding invective curses behind each verse, you shall be locked within a trance. A trance so abysmal as a buried spirit beneath the deepest cavern, but with this trance, you shall become victim to its nocturnal rite.”
As a more tangible sign of what the album encompasses, we’re now premiering one of its X tracks, a song named “Silent Suffering“.
From the name of the song, you might expect a subdued experience, a capturing of isolated pain, of life crushed by hopelessness and left in quiet tatters, whispering like dead leaves. But you’ll have to reconsider such an assumption when you hear the song.
The mood of the music is indeed crushed, and desolate, put it’s also fiercely yearning, and it has the kind of electrifying ring and thrusting power that’s far from subdued. Even at its most reflective, it’s gripping, and at high-speed it’s a heart-pounding torrent of furious intensity (though even then it doesn’t feel hopeful).
At the beginning and again at the end, ringing guitars wail by themselves, rendering despair in tones that wound, and then salt the wound. At the outset, that ringing motif is joined by lower and more dismal tones and by a hard punch in the low end and by vicious snarls and wretched screams above.
The more dismal riff digs in, and high arpeggios flicker like ardent striving. The bass keeps throbbing, and the drums keep punching, but also rocking. In the more quiet phase referred to above, the guitars glimmer and ruinously wail again, and then the music surges, driven by thundering blast-beats and high sonic waves that sear and sweep.
And so the song proves to be gripping in many ways, a nightside excursion that’s haunting in more ways than one.
On Moonspells and Everlasting Sorrow, Howl performs everything, and recorded, mixed, and mastered the record as well.
Void Wanderer will release the record on November 28th, on MC and digital formats, and recommends it for fans of Lunar Aurora, Agalloch, Sargeist, and Vinterland.
PRE-ORDER:
https://voidwanderer.com/product/detest-the-sun-moonspells-and-everlasting-sorrow-mc/
VOID WANDERER PRODUCTIONS:
https://voidwanderer.com/
https://voidwandererproductions.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/voidwandererprod
https://www.instagram.com/voidwandererproductions
DETEST THE SUN:
https://detestthesun.bandcamp.com