(written by Islander)
Elegantly garbed and golden-masked, the symphonic black metal band Velzevul has emerged from the far east of Russia with their debut album Pandemonium set for release in September by Satanath Records and More Hate Productions.
Their album imagines the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust, a nuclear wasteland on the shores of the Sea of Japan — that almost wholly enclosed body of water bordered by the Japanese archipelago, the Korean peninsula, and mainland Russia. Its concept is described in these words on behalf of the band and the labels (as translated from the Russian text):
…The melody of the silent silence of a cracked world, dying under a layer of gray ash, carried by the wind like the dust of human history, penetrating into the depths of consciousness, fettering feelings and reason with sticky mucus…
PANDEMONIUM, the debut full-length release of the band, will take us through the ashen twilight of houses littered with debris, scattered with broken glass and overgrown with an impassable wall of thorny bushes streets of the once huge metropolis, whose breath stopped under the blows of the genius of human thought, the pinnacle of the development of peaceful energy, nuclear missiles.
Over the course of two dozen polar winters, these streets with their serene gray background dissolve even the brightest colors of nature and leave the listener alone with themselves, with their thoughts and feelings, dissolved in the cosmic ether of a bygone world!
One sign of how Velzevul have rendered these terrors is in the song we’re premiering today, named for the demon Abigor — though it sounds more like the nuclear event itself.
Its symphonic melody, combined with brightly dancing piano keys, creates an atmosphere that’s both grand and perilous — ominous, sinister, and desolate. But the song includes other ingredients as well — exhilarating drum progressions, slugging riffs, bursts of feverish fretwork, goblin screams, and harrowing roars.
The music also becomes vast and panoramic, soaring to stratospheric heights and broadly sweeping, but it also violently convulses in spasms of blast-beat drumming, searing guitars, anguished symphonics, and high-speed, brute-force pummeling. As the album’s title foretells, it renders pandemonium.
Relentlessly but variably intense, the song creates visions of evil and fear, of devastation and pain.
VELZEVUL:
Max K – vocals
Pavel Y – guitars
Aleksei L – guitars
Den K – bass
Pandemonium will be released on September 2nd, on CD and digital formats. Pre-order links are below, along with a stream of the album’s first single, “Crystallization Of Desecration“.
PRE-ORDER:
https://satanath.bandcamp.com/album/sat402-velzevul-pandemonium-2025
http://www.morehate.com/