AN NCS EP PREMIERE: VICTIM PATH — “FACELESS NAMELESS”

 

After releasing a debut demo in 2011 (In Life We Trust), a debut album in 2012 (Surrounded By Pain), and a single the following year (“Edges of Insanity“), the Belarusian metal band Victim Path are returning at last with a new two-song EP. Entitled Faceless Nameless, it will be released tomorrow via Bandcamp, but we have a stream of both tracks for you today.

The band’s lyrical focus, as they explain it, is on themes of “misanthropy, pain, the loneliness of a human being who is deprived of a right to be god’s creation,” and “the denial of religious postulates, rules and dogmas of everyday life”. And beyond the lyrics, the music on this new EP is itself an expression of grief and pain, one that draws upon the stylistic tools of black metal but employs other musical styles as well. And so perhaps resorting to the more vague but more encompassing term “dark metal” could be appropriate.

 

 

The whir of discordant riffing and a rumbling drum beat greets the ears at the outset of the opener, “Divided Into Zero“, but when a scalding, anguished voice appears, the drumming has slowed, the bass has begun booming, and the melody has turned more downcast and miserable. The band continue these trade-offs between agony and bereavement, pausing to pull the listener into a different frame of mind with a hypnotic acoustic guitar interlude, accompanied by distorted spoken words.

Part of the allure of both tracks on the EP lies in the guitar soloing. There are two of them in “Divided Into Zero”, the first one slow and somber, the second one fast and spiraling. The title track presents another one — a channel-shifting, dual-guitar performance that sets the frets on fire. But before you reach that point in “Faceless Nameless“, Victim Path take you through a changing emotional soundscape, one that begins with a feeling of isolation and loss, as channeled through reverberating strings and slow drum beats, and then boils over with feverish guitar vibrations, rolling double-bass thunder, and a neck-snapping snare rhythm.

Solemn clean vocals add to the changing colors of the song, which builds to a powerful climax that includes that guitar solo mentioned before, and the combination of a vibrant closing riff, a thumping bass line, and a fusillade of blasting drums.

Together, the two songs create a mesmerizing though disturbing experience. Their dynamic changes are engrossing, and their haunting melodies have a way of sticking in the listener’s head.

 

This new EP is available now for pre-order at Bandcamp.

Bandcamp:
https://victimpath.bandcamp.com

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/VictimPath/