(written by Islander)
Today we assist Serpent Sun Records (UK) in announcing the new album Apocryphon Of The Unborn Light by the French satanic black metal band Novae Militiae. It will be released on September 18th and follows this mysterious band’s second album Topheth (2020) and their debut full-length Gash’khalah (2017). The label provides this ominous but intriguing description of the album’s conceptual framework:
Apocryphon of the Unborn Light presents itself as a revelation preceding all creation, where light itself has yet to be born, and where the order of the world already appears destined for its own dislocation. The album unfolds through a non-linear yet cyclical progression, where fall, knowledge and inversion intersect, within a vision where the end is not an outcome, but an original condition.
Each composition acts as a fragment within this whole, forming a coherent structure in which the visible and invisible frameworks of the world gradually fracture toward a point of rupture. Musically, the album is built upon a dark and incantatory form of black metal, alternating between extreme tension and more atmospheric passages, reinforcing an overall dynamic in which the distinction between creation and dissolution progressively dissolves, within a movement of dislocation confronting that which lies beyond.
As a first sign of what the album brings to listeners, today we’re premiering a song aptly named “Abyssal Dominion“.
The song is slightly more than eight minutes long, and for nearly all of those minutes it is a relentlessly blazing and blistering experience. The layered, tremolo-dominant riffing is ferociously fast and high-toned, generating the sound of an immense caustic swarm, a vast poisoning swarm that also deliriously writhes.
The drumming is equally fast and ferocious, the kind of blasting that sounds like mortar fire at an inhuman rate of speed. And to complete the experience of unbridled intensity the vocals expel the kind of raw, jagged-edged howls and screams that spawn images of a person possessed by hellish powers.
As noted, the speed and the incendiary vehemence of this attack is almost relentless, but Novae Militiae do introduce other accents and variations that will keep the attention of listeners riveted as the minutes pass: Most prominently, a ringing lead guitar periodically pierces through the furiously swarming riffage and peals like a quivering warning siren of terrible consequence.
The swarming chords also shift into a higher range as they writhe, making the music even more frighteningly intense, or descend into more dismal and pestilential moods. Moreover, the drums occasionally break from their rampant blasting to count a more measured cadence or create tumbling tom-fills, and at times the vocals are doubled, combining harrowing roars with those possessed howls.
And at the five-minute mark the drums briefly vanish, the guitars ominously clang, and the drums then brutally pound. The swarming resumes, but the mood becomes desolate, the melody seems to miserably wail, and a flickering lead guitar seems demented.
Upon reflection, it’s not just the vocals that sound possessed. The entire song sounds possessed. It’s violent, frighteningly enraptured, feverishly desperate, distressingly oppressive, and thoroughly exhilarating from start to finish.
Serpent Sun will release Apocryphon Of The Unborn Light on CD, vinyl LP, and digital formats. Pre-order opportunities will be available at the locations linked below.
ORDER:
EU shop : https://shop.silentfuture.se/serpent-sun
US shop : https://shop.silentfuture.us/collections/serpent-sun
Bandcamp : https://serpentsunrecords.bandcamp.com
FOLLOW NOVAE MILITIAE:
https://novaemilitiae.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/novae.militiae
https://www.instagram.com/novae.militiae
FOLLOW SERPENT SUN:
https://www.facebook.com/serpentsunrecords
https://www.instagram.com/serpent_sun_records