AN NCS PREMIERE: KOSTNATĚNÍ — “SAMOTÁŘ (LONER)”

(written by Islander)

At the end of this week, the Bandcamp Friday for September, Willowtip Records will launch pre-orders for a new album from Minneapolis-based Kostnatění. Titled Přílišnost (Excess), it’s this constantly surprising project’s third full-length overall, and follows the blend of technical black metal and Middle Eastern folk revealed in 2023’s Úpal (“Heatstroke”) — an album we described as “extravagantly head-spinning – dizzying, dazzling, and disorienting.”

Willowtip states that on the new album Kostnatění “has packed into this bizarre base an even stranger array of influences that must be heard to be believed,” resulting in “the band’s heaviest, most compact and violent songs to date.”

You will be able to test these claims today as we premiere the first advance track from the album, a song named “Samotář (Loner)“.

What seizes attention immediately about this song, and continues seizing it, are the mutated and mangling tones of the guitars and the ways in which they twist and turn. At the outset the notes uncomfortably writhe and blare, quickly creating moods of tension and distress, undergirded by hefty bass-throbs.

Disturbing as that prelude is, the music becomes even more stressful as the riffing frantically buzzes and contorts around hammering beats, a turbulent bass, and vicious, serrated-edge snarls. The music also becomes more deranged but also more exotic: The guitars feverishly quiver but also fluidly unfurl a captivating melody with apparently Eastern origins.

The song continues relentlessly morphing, using the elaborately layered and multi-toned guitars, plus constantly changing drum tempos and patterns, to create moods of menace, mystery, madness, and magnificence. The fretwork is complex, technically virtuosic, and kaleidoscopic in its impact. While the vocals are never less than maliciously ugly, they also change, ultimately exploding in terrifying screams as the song approaches its dazzling, adrenaline-fueled finale.

This particular song does reveal a fast-spinning blender of genre ingredients, defying simple categorization, but maybe it’s sufficient to call it “progressive extreme metal”, or simply a head-spinner of a high order. It is indeed bizarre, but also captivating and addictive.

Like the song, the album as a whole is one that’s so distinctive it’s likely to stand out during the closing months of the year.

Přílišnost (Excess) is dedicated “to the suffocating, destructive pursuit of self-perfection.”

Kostnatění is D.L., who also mixed and mastered the album. Drums were performed by Joe Goldwater, and the record includes additional vocal contributions by Mack. Credit for the cover art and layout goes to Metastazis.

Willowtip will release Přílišnost on November 7th. As mentioned at the outset, pre-orders will go up at the locations linked below on this coming Friday, September 5th, when the song we’ve just premiered will also become available as a single.

PRE-ORDER:
https://www.willowtip.com/bands/details/kostnat-n.aspx
https://willowtip.bandcamp.com/

KOSTNATĚNÍ:
https://linktr.ee/kostnateni
https://www.facebook.com/kostnateni/
https://www.instagram.com/kostnateni