(written by Islander)
“The Australian band Tyrannic have already established themselves as a weird and wild force to be reckoned with, harnessing together elements of classic doom and savage black metal, but not really beholden to any genre constraints in their haunting and harrowing explorations of Death and what lies beyond.”
That’s how we began our premiere of a song from Tyrannic‘s second album Mortuus Decadence almost exactly three years ago, an album we called “a fierce and frightening leap forward from what they’ve done before.”
And now, three years later, we return to Tyrannic with another song premiere, this one the title track to their new album Tyrannic Desolation that will arrive on November 22nd via Iron Bonehead Productions. Have they made another leap forward? Well, as today’s song will clue you in, concepts like “forward” and “backward” may be inapplicable to the current music of Tyrannic, which instead often seems to leap way off any mapping of directional coordinates.
But “weird” and “wild” are adjectives that definitely still apply — in spades — and you definitely won’t forget that “desolation” is right there in the song’s name.
At nearly seven minutes in length, the song affords Tyrannic room to roam, though “roam” isn’t really the right word for an excursion as disturbing and twisted as this one is.
Wasting no time, the track immediately vents cracked and ugly snarls, eerily writhing and wailing guitar vibrations, and drumming that fashions an off-kilter rhythm as it hammers and clatters.
While the music seems to straddle a line between dismal and deranged, it crosses the line with a thoroughly freaked-out guitar solo, and then continues to warp into new configurations of misery and madness, punctuated by equally strange drum-fills and sudden shifts in tempo, as well as further expulsions of near-strangled vocal hostility and sudden singing cries that sound fanatically possessed.
The guitars drag and moan, claw and gouge, and ring like awful heralds of plague. They also boil like disease run rampant, their agonies backed by maniacal double-bass runs and gagging shrieks. Near the end, a quivering lead guitar traces a seeping melody that may be even more bereft and broken than anything before, joined by another burst of spine-shivering cries at the zenith of shattered intensity.
Quite evidently, this is neither conventional doom nor conventional black metal, but a mutated cross-breeding of the two that’s perversely fascinating despite (or probably because of) how unsettling and even alarming it is.
These effects won’t be completely surprising to people who delved into Tyrannic‘s last album, but even those people may find themselves a bit dumb-struck and jaw-dropped when they hear this.
Iron Bonehead will release Tyrannic Desolation, which includes eight songs and 48 minutes of madness, on CD and vinyl LP formats. As usual, the label isn’t trafficking in pre-orders, so circle November 22 on your calendars, and remember the links below.
Also below you’ll find a stream of “Prophetic Eyes of Glass“, the first song released from the new album for public dissemination.
MORE INFO:
https://www.facebook.com/Tyrannic-413672648839389
https://www.ironbonehead.de
https://ironboneheadproductions.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/ironboneheadproductions