(written by Islander)
On this day (a Bandcamp Friday for those who pay attention to such things) the Italian band Stygian are releasing a new two-song EP named Hunt the Divine. It follows their 2025 debut album Dreadlands, which we had the pleasure of premiering and reviewing. As we wrote then, Dreadlands presented “an intersection or fusion of two worlds, a hybrid of crust punk and black metal” that proved to be “as fierce, as wounded, and as defiantly resilient as the album’s thematic insights”.
As for those thematic insights, they reflected “serious thought, scorching insight, and honest rage”. To quote the band:
Dreadlands explores the contrast between two spiritual worlds: the harmony-centered pagan traditions and the legacy of Abrahamic religions, which often channel humanity’s most violent instincts. While pagan rites served to express and contain primal forces, maintaining balance between humankind and nature, monotheistic dogmas have frequently justified war and destruction in the name of faith. This work stands as a tribute to life, to the sacred bond between people and the natural world — a bond shattered by centuries of religious conflict.
Now we return to Stygian with our premiere of the new EP on the day of its release. Here’s the description we received of the EP’s themes:
“Hunt the Divine explores the rejection of religious authority and the power built around dogma. From the symbolic hunt for the divine in “Hunt the Divine” to the confrontation between divine word and human consciousness in “Verba Homini“, the two tracks portray a conflict between imposed faith and self-determination through violent, ancestral and deliberately allegorical imagery.”
In both of these new songs the lyrics are indeed enraged and violent, and in both they are directed against post-pagan religious dogmas and authorities. The lyrics of the title song imagine an ancestral narrator hunting for a claimed divinity, a hunter seeking to erase injustice and feast on the flesh of his prey in “the darkness broken by the moon”.
As we’ve written before, the ferocity of the title song’s vocals matches the fury in the words; they eject the lyrics in the kind of savage howls and livid screams that spawn images of claws extended and teeth bared.
The music rages as well, but it’s a grim, bitter, and coldly predatory kind of anger, very much like the soundtrack to a determined and murderous hunt through an ominous moon-lit forest (something also imagined in the EP’s cover art). But we should emphasize that the music is also a channel of deep sorrow and regret for what has already been lost to the hunter’s fleeing prey.
The song opens with a stalking pace and slow, brutally distorted reverberations that are bleak and frightening in their mood. The drums begin to more heavily pound, and then they explode in a torrent of blast-beats just as the vocals arrive and the riffing begins to swarm (while still carrying forward that grim opening melody).
The rhythm section shift into a rocking cadence as the riffing both sizzles and throbs. The vibrating lead guitar seems to wail in grief, and the riffing moans and groans but also heavily surges again, like the coursing of blood through a hammering heart. When the band slow the pace once more, the shrill and feverishly flickering lead guitar and those bleak abrasive notes deepen the song’s feeling of soul-sinking grief (though the scorching vocals keep the fury at the forefront too).
It’s a dark and unsettling song with a lot of visceral power and dynamic momentum, and it’s a very memorable one too.
And now we turn to the EP’s other song, “Verba Homini“. Here, the lyrics are again murderous, raging over the power of religion “to choose who lives or dies” and exhorting listeners to reject “absurd dogmas” and free ourselves to rule our own lives instead.
The song drives with galloping beats and rakes with abrasive crust-punk riffing. Vividly whirling leads and those raw, snarling vocals add to its heart-pounding intensity, and the vibrant bass-lines snarl as well.
But as in the EP’s title song, Stygian also darken the mood, greatly slowing their momentum and making room for the lead guitar to rise up and grieve. But this time baritone singing gloomily contributes to the casting of shadows, even though it trades off with the scalding screams. Slowly, the lead guitar slithers like a wounded soul.
But Stygian’s rage has only briefly been biding its time during that haunting interlude, and it bursts forth again, hammering and blazing in tandem with panther-like cries, yet Stygian reprise the grim clean-sung vocals and the more dismal melody before the song ends.
Like the EP’s title song, “Verba Homini” hits on varying emotional levels, and it has staying power.
This is obviously a very short EP, but one that’s a very welcome offering from a band that deserves more attention.
STYGIAN is:
Emiliano Melandri – Vocals
Mirko Abà – Guitar
Lucio Minghetti – Guitar
Paolo Parmeggiani Lopez – Bass
Rolando Giulio Ferro – Drums
For more information about Stygian and the new EP, check the locations linked below.
https://stygianbhc.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/stygianbhc
https://www.instagram.com/stygianbhc
https://open.spotify.com/artist/5MVTPxaw9v1aboMm7O6FVV
