Barathrum
(written by Islander)
I’ll put my cards on the table (it’s a very weak hand): I got a late start on this Sunday morning and my beautiful black chariot will turn into a pumpkin very soon, which is to say that very soon I’ll have to leave home for the rest of the day due to other commitments.
Which is to say that, because time is short, I don’t have very much new black metal to recommend today. But I hope that the few things I’ve been able to hurriedly write about below will still succeed in ruining improving your day.
BARATHRUM (Finland)
Old does not mean dull. I tell myself that every day when I look in the mirror, though what I see is often not very convincing. Further encouragement comes from bands such as Barathrum, who have been making music since the early ’90s but haven’t been dulled by time.
Granted, their current lineup includes people who joined their ranks much later, but co-founder Demonos Sova is still there, and though greater spans of time have intervened between full-lengths than during their first decade, they do have a new album named Überkill set for arrival in time for Samhain.
Below you’ll find a stream of a song from the new album named “Dark Sorceress 3 (Spring Siege)“. There, the drums vividly rumble and the riffing coldly and slowly rages while some ghastly being roars in the distance and another gritty one utters fanatical pronouncements.
The lead guitar slowly moves like a miserable slithering serpent, joined by a second serpent to create a wailing harmony in the midst of the heavy, slashing chords and cracking drums. But the music begins to flare and levitate, becoming more diabolical and imperious, and the lead guitar exults. Fanged teeth emerge in the vocals too, viciously gnashing the words as the drums whip up skull-rattling riots.
Barathrum have a reputation for making bass-heavy, “black/doom” metal, and that reputation is still safe here, though you could call it “black heavy metal” too. They’re keeping the old school they helped build safe from falling apart.
Überkill will be released on October 11th by Hammer of Hate Records.
https://kvlt.fi/
https://www.facebook.com/barathrumofficial
MARRAS (Finland)
A few weeks ago, in another one of these columns, I wrote about a hellish song from a new album by the Finnish black metal band Aethyrick that was just released last Friday.
But that’s not Aethyrick‘s only 2024 discharge. Next month Spread Evil Productions will also release A Union of Spectres, a six-song split between Aethryick and the Finnish band Marras. The next song below is one of the tracks contributed by the latter band.
“Between Two Worlds” is a multi-faceted and interesting experience. As the drums lumber and stalk, the high whining riffs and vividly spiraling lead guitar channel a fiendish kind of glory. But the song also convulses in mad violence, with drums hurtling, the vocals screaming fire, and the guitars accelerating into a searing swarm of sound.
Yet the lead guitar (or maybe keys?) also ethereally soar, piercing the ears with sounds of degradation, and the surrounding music also grows grim. When the Marras dials up the energy again, the layered guitars seem to straddle an emotional line between furious striving and tormented bleakness.
And in its final phase the song suddenly transforms into a sweeping cinematic drift, in which other tones glisten and an echoing voice makes pronouncements.
A Union of Spectres will be released by Spread Evil on October 18th (CD and LP).
https://www.spreadevil.net
https://www.facebook.com/marrasblackmetal
https://www.aethyrick.com
THYRATHEN (Greece)
Escaping from Finland while it was still relatively safe to do so, I found myself in Greece, succumbing to the music of Thyrathen as represented in the following lyric video.
The title of the song is “Η Πόλις | The City: The Philosophical Poem“. The band provide this credit:
“A huge thanks and our appreciation to the Poet Constantine Cavafy, for the inspiration and for the identification felt (psychology: the association with something) by his poem entitled, ‘The City’. A diachronic, lyrical journey for redemption, dedicated to the betrayal of all expectations.”
Focusing on the music, rather than the ferociously uttered poetry, the band stagger forward in a mid-paced momentum and drench the listener in melodies of crawling despair — though with a high-toned voice heard several latitudes above, and with gang yells and wordless choral voices heroically appearing as well.
As the song evolves, the lead guitar manifests as an exotic and beckoning presence.The riffing also catches a fever, the bass thunders and bubbles, the drums gallop, and the lead guitar also vividly seizes attention again, wailing and striving and soaring in its passion. It leads the song into a phase of grim, towering majesty, and the tones of an ancient lyre add yet another exotic accent to the spectacle. The vocals themselves escalate in their own passion, pouring it all out with untamed fervor.
The song is from from an upcoming Thyrathen album named Lakonic, which will be released by Floga Records (CD/LP/MC) on November 1st.
http://www.flogarecords.com
https://flogarecords.bandcamp.com/
https://www.thyrathen.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/thyrathen.band
ÄERA (Germany)
To close this brief roundup I picked another lyric video (in German), this one for a song named “Fleisch und Knochen” from a forthcoming album named Phantast.
There’s more than one band whose name looks like “Aera”, though this German trio deploy an umlaut over the first letter. As represented in the song below, their music is a very heavy and harrowing form of black metal.
The riffing is abrasive and scouring, and as it rises it channels desperation and pain, though the screaming vocals sound even more tortured. The bass murmurs and feverishly throbs from subterranean depths while the drums methodically chop like an executioner’s ax and erupt in booming rumbles.
The guitars swarm and burn, threatening to self-immolate, but they also grimly swirl and miserably mewl their agonies. There’s no real relent in the music’s pain until the song’s second half, when a lonesome guitar sizzles (a more subdued kind of pain), but the band turn up the heat of their fevers again as the rhythm section and the vocalist attack. The music ascends, sweeps, and scorches, yet still sounds anguished at its core, with no comfort to be found there.
(I haven’t tried to copy and translate the lyrics, so I don’t know if my interpretation of the emotions in the music is matched by the intent of the words. Maybe one of our German-speaking followers can tell us.)
Phantast is set for release by Vendetta Records on October 4th. It draws inspiration from Christian Morgenstern‘s collection “In Phantas Schloss.”
https://vendettarecords.bigcartel.com/
https://aeera.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/aeeraband