(written by Islander)

Today marks the third time we’ve premiered music from an album by the Cuban black metal band Skjult, but the first time in more than six years — because that’s how much time has passed since the band’s last album, The Voyage. Skjult’s new album, A Perfect Devouring Light, will be co-released on July 17th by Satanath Records (Georgia) and The End of Times Records (Ireland). Here is how the labels preview the new album:

With A Perfect Devouring Light, SKJULT does not extend its previous work so much as destabilize its own foundations. This fifth full-length marks a decisive conceptual shift in which light ceases to function as revelation and instead emerges as a violent, excessive force: an ontological agent that penetrates, consumes, and ultimately nullifies every structure of distinction. Arranged as a continuous liturgical arc, the album rejects the logic of discrete composition while articulating a precise sequence of conceptual intensities…

It’s probably difficult (if not impossible) for most of us to imagine the challenges of making black metal in Cuba, or frankly the challenges of living from day to day for most of the populous in a country that’s now caught in a stranglehold between its dictatorial rulers and a U.S. regime that has created an oil blockade, intensified economic sanctions, and threatened to conquer the island. Current news reports identify severe shortages of fuel, medicines, and food, and the paralysis of large sectors of the economy.

Very dark days indeed, and yet Skjult’s sole creator, Conspirator, forges on, perhaps influenced in his conceptual shift by the dire conditions around him. As a sign of what the new album brings, and one step in its liturgical arc, we have for you a song called “The Light Within the Darkness“. Continue reading »