(written by Islander)
Nearly a decade after their inception, the Rhode Island based black metal band Ancient Torment will at last release their debut album after a handful of shorter records that have emerged beginning in 2019. Entitled Follow the Echo of Curses, it will be discharged by the Eternal Death label on August 1st.
Although this is a first album, it’s not the work of novices: The band’s lineup includes members of such bands as Witch King, I, Destroyer, and Cruciamentum, and former members of Black Sorcery (among other bands). And it doesn’t sound like a novice work either.
The music is often vast and emotionally devastating in its dynamic renditions of fury, torment, and desolation, the kind of experiences that swallow up listeners and hold them captive to the band’s intentions. Not for naught does Eternal Death describe the album as “an immersive, introspective journey through the shadows of abysmal suffering and mysteries of death’s embrace.”
To help blaze the path toward the record’s release, today we’re premiering one of its six expansive songs, “Under the Guise of Virtue“.
In this song Ancient Torment attack without prelude, discharging a dense and malicious anti-harmony of viciously roiling riffage and hammering beats, a layered swarm of abrasion and tire-iron blows augmented by blistering screams behind the mic.
As the song continues surging forward the drum rhythms change to punk beats and the emotional quality of those amply layered guitars (both caustic and fire-bright) changes too: Still frantic, they elevate and broaden the expanse of the music to near-symphonic scale, but the melody becomes intensely bereft, a storm of suffering and desperation.
The music begins to sound like a conflict among warring forces. One side cruelly attacks with blast-beats and unhinged fretwork blizzards; another creates glorious, swirling exhortations and summons feral energies; and still, while the music blazes and wildly pulsates, a lead guitar pierces through the maelstrom and seems to wretchedly wail, manifesting the pain.
The song’s darker and more devastating moods eventually become even more shadow-cast as the tempo slows. In the low end the music seems to stagger and heave, and the vocals transition from scorching derangement to gloomy tones, half-spoken and half-sung. But the spectacular storms spin up again, reprising the ravishing motifs that so extravagantly marked the song’s opening phases.
“Under the Guise of Virtue” is an incredibly intense, incredibly engulfing, incredibly adrenaline-triggering experience, and melodically very memorable as well.
The album was recorded at Distorted Forest Studio, described as “a space of reclusive solitude in the woods of northern Rhode Island”, over the early months of 2024. It was mixed by Josh Welshman (Flux Studios NYC), mastered by Dan Lowndes (Resonance Sound Studio), and features cover art by David Thiérrée.
Find pre-order and further info about the album and the band below. We’ve also included a stream of the first advance track from the album, “Sorrow Verses“, which is every bit as ravaging, as dynamic, and as wholly immersive as the song we’ve just premiered, and maybe even more emotionally shattering, nearly overpowering in its rendering of torment and loss.
PRE-ORDER:
https://eternaldeath.bandcamp.com/album/follow-the-echo-of-curses
ANCIENT TORMENT:
https://ancienttorment.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/ancienttorment
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