AN NCS PREMIERE: PEST — “LIGHT FADES”

(written by Islander)

We spin through space, the ground beneath us ever-turning, and as the rotations accumulate sometimes what was lost is found again.

Ensconced in Lower Saxony, the German black metal band Pest came to life in 1997 and released five albums and an EP between then and 2014. The fifth of those full-lengths, Buried, was so named because it was to be the band’s last one following the death of Pest‘s co-founder Mrok. And so Pest was lost. But now they’re found again.

With an album-length split released last year (sharing sides with the band Cultus), these plague doctors returned, and on October 17th Pest will at last release their sixth album through Heidens Hart Records, a haunting and harrowing record fittingly named Eternal Nightmares. Today we bring you its second single, “Light Fades“.

True to its name, this song does indeed manifest the fading of light, and of life, the extinguishing of joy and the fracturing of hope into a thousand shards. In two words, it is deeply stricken. But it is also powerfully mesmerizing, the kind of bleak yet also soul-stirring spell that makes listeners forget where they are and stills their busy minds.

All of the song’s component pieces vitally contribute to these effects. Three of them lead the way in submerging us beneath the band’s chilling aural incantation (listening is indeed a bit like drowning, drifting down into lightless depths but not fighting to regain the surface).

The initial riffing creates a dense, vibrating swarm, the harmonized chords slowly rising and falling like channels of dismal grief. The bass murmurs its own sorrow. The drums momentously boom as if performing a funeral rite, and then create a staggering march. A lead guitar wails its misery.

To signal the advent of the vocals, the drums spur into a racing gallop and the bass feverishly throbs, a fitting surge for the electrifying terrors of the vocals, which expel maniacal howls of shattering wretchedness and fury. The guitars find a higher elevation, as if splintering with pain and pleading for relief from their agonies. The drums also resemble an avalanche.

When the dense whir of the riffing relents, the bass moans, the drums slowly pound and crack, and the guitars then sound like corrosive chimes, ringing but damaged, still rising and falling, still soul-sinking but also majestic. But we continue our drowning descent, dragged down again by the tremolo’d whir, but with pulses hammering thanks to the rhythm section’s riotous energies, the guitars’ soaring and sour harmonies, and the frightening intensity of wild howls.

Well, that’s a lot of words! But the song is so captivating in its darkness that it deserves far more than a simple “listen to this.” But anyway, whether these words do the song justice or not, LISTEN TO THIS!

The newly risen Pest is the work of co-founder Scum, Atax, Mr. Blasphemy, and new member Brandt. The new album was still fully recorded and mixed by the band themselves in their rehearsal room.

For more info about the album and Pest‘s current activities, check out the locations linked below. Also below you’ll find the album’s first single, “Running in Rage“, which is also well worth your time.

https://www.heidenshart.nl
https://www.facebook.com/heidenshart
https://heidenshart.bandcamp.com
https://truepest.bandcamp.com/