(written by Islander)
Today we help introduce listeners to the German black metal band SRPNTS, a band formed from the ashes of the group Zwielicht after their bassist Veit Benning died in 2024. Their debut album Second Shape is now set for release by Serpent Sun Records (UK) on October 2nd of this year.
The album’s name manifests its occult inspirations and objectives, a work shaped by nihilism, Gnostic opposition, and the alchemical principle of solve et coagula. We’ll share some of what we’ve received regarding the intent behind the music:
The title Second Shape refers to transformation after dissolution. The state that remains after the first form has been stripped, burned and sacrificed. The album is not meant as a narrative of salvation but as a passage through loss, negation and occult illvmination, where the old self is not healed or restored but abandoned and reformed into something colder, clearer and self-willed.
Its imagery revolves around thresholds, false cosmic order, fire as revelation, the Serpent as initiator and the final act of coagulation. The outline of a new form rising from the Void.
To help further introduce SRPNTS and their music, today we’re presenting a song from Second Shape named “Inter Limina“.
L-R: Chöd — Malfeitor — Brimstone — Promethean — Ceallach (photo by @incantatrix.photograph)
Even as only one movement through the album’s musical narrative, “Inter Limina” itself sounds like a process of transformation — a violent transformation.
Announced by an explosive and extensive howl of passion, the music immediately storms. The pacing is fast, driven by herculean blast-beats, a thundering bass-line, and riffage of blazing intensity that rises, falls, and roils.
Jagged-edged howls and fanatical screams continue adding their own fires to the music’s incendiary explosiveness, and, almost like a siren, ringing tones vividly pulse through the gales, while the riffing also generates a feverishly jolting pulse of its own. The combined effect of all this is to generate an emotional power that seems to straddle a line between agony and defiance, between near-despair and furious striving.
SRPNTS eventually slow the hurtling pace, and then the vibrantly sizzling riffage descends in gloom and rises in pain, joined by a shining lead guitar that quivers and whirls, leading the music into an extravagant ascent of intensity, followed by another descent into a phase of even greater sorrow than before. Near the end, the music begins to methodically pound, but the lead guitar continues to send up grand fanfares of tormented sound and traceries of melodic brilliance.
Throughout the song the vocals are truly astonishing, both wrenching and furious, and so unchained and unhinged in as to conjure visions of all-consuming fervor and dedication.
In short, “Inter Limina” is a breathtaking experience, relentless in its fiery intensity yet also (perhaps unexpectedly) haunting.
SRPNTS have shared this testament about the cover art for their album:
The cover artwork for our debut album Second Shape was created by Karmazid who also forged the SRPNTS logo.
He absorbed the album and its words, following the current beneath them.
From that descent, the artwork took shape.
Not as mere illustration but manifestation…
a body after dissolution,
a wound after fire,
a second shape drawn from ash, negation and will.
Serpent Sun Records will release Second Shape on October 2nd. Eventually, order opportunities will become available at the locations linked below.
ORDER:
EU shop : https://shop.silentfuture.se/serpent-sun
US shop : https://shop.silentfuture.us/
Bandcamp : https://serpentsunrecords.bandcamp.com
FOLLOW SRPNTS:
Bandcamp: https://srpnts.bandcamp.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61552297946606
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/srpnts_official
FOLLOW SERPENT SUN:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/serpentsunrecords
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/serpent_sun_records
Youtube: @SerpentSunRecords