The Finnish black metal band Hail Conjurer has been following a year-after-year album release cycle since the first full-length (Dreams of Serpent) in 2018, with other releases in between. We’re now beginning a new calendar year, and so we will have a new Hail Conjurer album, the band’s ninth. The new one, which will be released by a triumvirate of labels, is named Order of Disgrace.
For those who might be encountering this band for the first time, it’s the solo endeavor of a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist who is also a member of Hooded Menace, Horse Latitudes, Ride For Revenge, and Regere Sinister (among others), but Hail Conjurer seems to be his most personal project, and a vehicle he always goes back to.
As you can see, today we’re bringing you a song from the new album named “New Order,” presented through a video. But before we get to it, we’ll share a bit of info about the new album and how it compares to the last one.
photo by Mika Rantanen
As Hail Conjurer explains, the last album, 2024’s Satanic Phenomenology, “mostly explored the cold harshness of demonic reality, but opened for a slightly different undertone (carnal existence) on its last song ‘Ritus Paganus.'” The new album continues from there, “and takes also a turn with some theological interpretations of the philosophical themes of Satanic Phenomenology“:
The New Order of Passion and Disgrace reveals sin and lust as the active antithesis of piety and spirituality (instead of passive lack of them), as carnal tools for purifying from grace and light. In comparison for the cold flame of Satanic Phenomenology, the fire in Order of Disgrace burns much hotter, reflected with the production of the album.
The music of “New Order” is a changing experience, but one that relentlessly reveals the devotion and passion of its conjurer, just as the video does.
Facilitated by ever-shifting drum tempos and inventive patterns, and by equally varying vocals, which range from possessed screams to gritty snarls, wild cries, and monstrous gutturals, the music moves among phases of dark stateliness, visceral lusting, esoteric mystery, brazen exultation, and fierce grandeur.
The drums beat a solemn march and the music sweeps and glitters in the upper elevations. The drums thunder and the music blazes. Grand heavy metal chords slash with carnal thrust, and the music also combines elements of melancholy and mystique, like the unfolding of dark incantations.
At times, it almost sounds like the slow pealing of ominous horns or the moaning of the bereaved, and at others like the heavens gloriously ablaze, but always returns to that feral thrusting riff, and always accompanied by attention-seizing drumwork and vocals of shattering intensity — but with gentle acoustic picking at the finale.
VIDEO CREDITS:
Camera: H. Hiltunen & K. Tervahauta
Edit: H. Hiltunen & A.E.E. Viljamaa
Order of Disgrace was recorded and mixed by Hail Conjurer, and was mastered by Harald Mentor. Here’s the complete track list:
1. Antithesis
2. Let Him Watch
3. New Order
4. Huoruuden Perkele
5. Melancholy Forest
6. Transference
7. Burning Rope
The vinyl version of the album will be released February 28th on Crypt of the Wizard when Hail Conjurer plays a show at the Life After Death 2 festival in London (tickets here). A CD edition will be released in April on Bestial Burst, and a cassette tape edition will follow shortly via Tour de Garde. See the links below for more info.
https://hailconjurer.bandcamp.com/
http://bestialburst.com/
https://www.cryptofthewizard.com/
https://t-d-g.net/
https://www.facebook.com/hailconjurer
https://www.instagram.com/hailconjurer