AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: BLOOD OF KINGU — “DARK STAR ON THE RIGHT HORN OF THE CRESCENT MOON”

The Ukrainian black metal horde Blood of Kingu are on the verge of releasing Dark Star On the Right Horn of the Crescent Moon — their third album and their first in more than five years. As you will soon hear, it is a grim devotional to disease, doom, and decay — an intense, immersive listening experience that over its length builds a wholly enveloping atmosphere of ominous peril.

With Drudkh’s main man Roman Sayenko once again piloting this dangerous vessel, Blood of Kingu drive the music with relentless blasting percussion and huge moving waves of almost ceaseless tremolo-picked chords, accented by eerie and ominous keyboards that effectively deepen the aura of doom. Through these dense moving walls of sound, bleak minor-key melodies ripple like disease vectors, and Sayenko’s monstrous, hollow roars sound like a ritualistic chant in an occult ceremony of death. When the band isn’t storming like a hurricane, they’re pounding like titans hammering nails into granite, or using massive groaning chords in a way that sounds like chains being dragged across a crypt floor.

The album’s savage assault is segmented by two brief ambient interludes, but even those breaks do nothing but further intensify the sense that you have been transported to an arid, decomposing wasteland of perpetual night.

As if the bleak melodies, gale-force instrumentation, and monstrous vocals weren’t enough to sink all souls, the album was produced in a way that creates a heavy, almost overpowering sound. But for the wisp of flute melody that surfaces surprisingly in “He Who Is Not To Be Named”, the music is tyrannical and crushing.

Dark Star On the Right Horn of the Crescent Moon burns like a conflagration, but like a black flame it casts no light. It is, however, a powerful listening experience created by people who are utterly dedicated to their dark art.

The album will be released by Season of Mist on September 2, 2014, and can be pre-ordered here. The track list is as follows:

1. Crowned Scarlet Moon Is Waiting For Eclipse
2. He Who Is Not To Be Named
3. Mother Hydra
4. Enshrined In The Nethermost Lairs Beneath The Oceans
5. Red Star On The Path Of Ea
6. Sigil Of The Watcher
7. Prayer To The Gods Of Night
8. The Bringer Of Pestilence
9. The Cycle Returneth

Stream the album here:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Blood-of-Kingu/121725098029258