(written by Islander)
In late 2019, paltry months away from the world being consumed and frozen in place by the covid pandemic, we came across a startling early single called “Milk Sea (Bathing in Its Waves)” by the Canadian black metal band Witherer, then the solo effort of one Tiamoath. It was a fascinating two-part piece of music that created the feeling of being caught in someone else’s disturbing yet transfixing hallucination, an intricate and unpredictable work that was by turns dreamlike, frenzied, and disorienting.
The song made a striking impression and, as I wrote at the time, left me eager to discover how Witherer would follow that first release. And then of course the world turned black, and even after it recovered (sort of) nothing more was heard from Witherer — until now.
Now, at last, Witherer is returning with a debut album entitled Shadow Without a Horizon (which will be released on June 20th by Hypaethral Records), rising to the surface again only to lead us far down through crushing depths to witness stunning catastrophes.
But this isn’t the same Witherer we first heard more than five years ago. Both the band and the music have undergone a transformation, as you’ll discover for yourselves through today’s premiere of the song “Devourer of All Graveyards“.
photo by Mike Wandy
The band itself has expanded, as founding musician and lead songwriter/lyricist Tiamoath joined forces with guitarist Øhrracle and drummer Hex Visceræ. Working together, and working through obstacles confronting all three of them, including health issues and Tiamoath ‘s own brush with death, they re-defined Witherer‘s sound, creating a genre-splicing combination of “black/death intensity and vast funeral doom ritualism” (to quote from press materials for the album). To borrow further from those materials:
Witherer crafts soundscapes both punishing and dreamlike, claustrophobic and immense, ruthless and meditative…. On Shadow Without A Horizon, the vile depths and dragging slowness of funeral doom are punctuated by throttling chaos; churning violence gives way to airy, spectral passages, and mournful ambience is sliced through with feverish convulsions in a truly distinctive approach to blackened death/doom.
The song you’re about to hear is a particularly striking (and representative) example of both Witherer‘s musical evolution and the lyrical themes of the new album. We’ll share these comments about it from Tiamoath, which were quoted in a recent feature about the album published in Decibel magazine’s June issue (number 248, available here):
“Devourer of All Graveyards” really encapsulates the songwriting approach of the band. Vicious, punishing black/death sections bookend the song, while ritualistic, pensive funeral doom carves out its compositional heart. What we hope to create for the listener is a certain anxiety: by the time you’ve sunk into the atmospheric, meditative weight of the slower sections, the song spirals into violent intensity once more.
Thematically, as well, the lyrics of this song are something of a summation of Shadow Without a Horizon as a whole. The caverns below one’s feet are, in a very real sense, the cathedral halls of specters and ghosts: the process of death and decay inevitably takes all bodies downwards into the earth, the devourer of all graveyards. The shadows aeons-long that stretch throughout the earth’s veins contain the same pitch-black as the cosmos – the heart of the earth, the heart of the heavens, the cloak of Mother Death: it is all endless shadow, shadow without a horizon.
Tiamoath‘s comment about trying to create for the listener “a certain anxiety” through this extensive new song rings true. As the lyrics portray, the music also effectively draws a daunting connection between the blackness of the earth’s own devouring veins and the gaping abyssal regions of the cosmos above.
The song’s opening phase of black/death is an elaborate turmoil, an eye-popping amalgam of rapidly roiling and writhing riffage that’s scathing in tone, vividly somersaulting drums, spectral but delirious leads, scorching howls, and monstrous roars. The music is heavy and frenzied, cutting and gutting, heartless and cruel — and the riffing will burrow into listener’s skulls like a turbocharged tunneling machine.
Having violently seized attention in that opening segment, Witherer start leading us through increasingly labyrinthine passages. The music becomes less violent, more instrumentally mercurial, and considerably more strange and hallucinatory. It generates an intriguing but frightfully unsettling and unpredictable collage of sounds and moods — a discordant, demented, and distraught collage.
The music seems to whine and scream, bludgeon and blare, moan and decay, and the rhythm section’s own idiosyncratic maneuvers significantly add to the music’s mentally un-balancing and anxiety-inducing effects (as does the continuing tandem of cold-hearted gutturals and berserk shrieks).
But still more changes lie ahead. The music becomes ethereal and beautiful, joining together moody guitar-picking and shimmering swaths of celestial ambient sound. Yet frightening gasps revive anxiety. The bass murmurs, the drums clatter, and the music swells and wails, magnifying that unsettling feeling.
Those quivering instrumental wails, both high and low, are distressing, but the song’s final phase is even more disconcerting. It is frenzied violence re-born, with drums rumbling like an avalanche, the riffage boiling in deranged seizures, the vocals going mad.
As you might imagine from all these words, a lot happens in this remarkably elaborate song, some of it unconventional and even bewildering, some of it viscerally vicious, all of it as dark as its theme but richly shaded. And while the quoted references to black/death metal and funeral doom aren’t out of place, they really don’t fully capture what Witherer have so inventively done here. See for yourselves:
WITHERER is:
Tiamoath – Vocals, guitars, bass, songwriting, keyboards, bells
Øhrracle – Vocals, guitars
Hex Visceræ – Drums
Shadow Without A Horizon features artwork, layout, and photo editing by Danille Gauvin. Witherer explain the cover art:
Danille Gauvin‘s “Vanitas” artistically reflects the musical intention behind Shadow Without a Horizon, and we are very honored that it serves as the cover of our album. Based on a 17th century anonymous vanitas, the art reflects the fragility of mortality, the futility of earthly riches, and the levelling power of Death. All opulence collapses into dust, all that was is chaff under the Reaper’s sickle, all flesh decays in the earth, the devourer of all graveyards…
The new album also includes guest voice and guitar by T. G. on “Praises” and additional vocals by M. Adem on “Devourer Of All Graveyards” and “Solar Collapse Mandala.” It was recorded by Roland Rodas at Cavern Of Echoes Studios and Matt Hems at Seventh Level Sound except “The Wailing Hours (Plummeting Under The Tunnels)” which was recorded and produced by Cameron O’Neill. M. Adem’s vocals were engineered and produced by Raphael Weinroth-Browne. Mixing and mastering was handled by Rodas (also at Cavern Of Echoes Studios).
Shadow Without A Horizon will be released on CD (ltd. 300) and digital formats as well as 2xLP (100 on Subterranean Blue vinyl and 200 on Black vinyl). Hypaethral is also offering a limited-edition “The Dying of the Last Flame” shirt that features the following artwork by Misanthropic-Art (find pre-orders for everything via the links below):
And finally, below the links you can have a listen to the first single from the album, “Solar Collapse Mandala“. Here is how Witherer introduced that song:
“Solar Collapse Mandala” is an uncompromising purgation, a funeral pyre whose flames writhe above and beneath dying stars. It holds in mesmerizing tension doom-laden opaque atmospheres and crushing black/death intensity. Eerie, phantom-like vocalizations erupt from this ceremonial ichor into igneous violence, the composition burning itself to ashes as its meditative churning builds gravitational momentum towards a punishing and ruthless conclusion.
PRE-ORDER:
https://hypaethralrecords.com/collections/witherer
https://hypaethralrecords.bandcamp.com/album/shadow-without-a-horizon
WITHERER:
https://www.instagram.com/withererdeath
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61570087235639