The thorned nightshade gardens of black metal have extravagantly expanded from their poisonous underground root stocks and become hybridized to the point where some of the offshoots have even taken on the kind of prettier hues that appeal to non-vampiric surface-dwellers. But of course there are still many black-hearted horticulturalists out there, devotedly caring for the genre’s barbed and deadly old-growth vines, greedily inhaling their aromas like pestilential perfume and exhaling hate.
The Israeli black metal band Dim Aura don’t completely reject the idea of hybridization, but they’re unquestionably devoted to the perpetuation of cold malice and tyrannical fury. Their newest display of sonic torment and cruelty is The Triumphant Age of Death, an album that will be released by Saturnal Records on March 22nd. It adds to a discography that includes a pair of EPs and a debut full-length from 2013, The Negation of Existence. From that album, we present its first single, an onslaught on organized religion named “Black Heretic Hate“.
“Hate” is in the very name of the track, and seems to live in every fiber of its being. It’s a bitter and brutal experience, its ruthlessness made evident in the mid-paced, head-butting drum work and gut-rumbling bass tones at the outset, and in the malice transmitted through the whining riff and an extravagantly protracted howl. Following a bridge, the drummer takes off in a gallop and the guitar rises to a pulsing and piercing attack as the vocalist vents truly skin-stripping fury.
Punctuated by bursts of percussive blasting and an incendiary solo, the song’s viciousness climbs ever higher into the red zone, while the vocalist continues turning himself inside-out in a blazing rage. The band return to a head-bobbing gait before finishing the song in a final orgy of cold-hearted, knife-wielding laceration. Mercy is a foreign concept in this track, and sometimes that’s exactly the kind of catharsis we need.
Saturnal Records will release this new offering of nihilistic black metal in a jewel-case CD edition with an 8-page booklet, as well as digitally. Pre-order opportunities will be made available in February. Watch these spaces to find out when that happens:
SATURNAL RECORDS:
https://www.saturnalrecords.com
https://www.facebook.com/saturnalrecords
https://saturnalrecs.bandcamp.com
DIM AURA:
https://www.facebook.com/dimaurabm
https://dimaura.bigcartel.com
https://dim-aura.bandcamp.com
TRACK LIST:
1. Clockwork Negativism
2. Towards The Plague
3. Black Heretic Hate
4. Blood Boiling Misanthropy
5. Death, Total Death
6. Antinomianism
7. The Triumphant (Age of Death)
8. The Cruel
9. Mors Vincit Omnia