(written by Islander)
Some metal albums are essentially collections of singles, songs that don’t have any thematic connection to each other. Others are “concept” albums, in which the songs have their place in some unifying pre-conceived vision by the artist(s), whether lyrical or musical or both. Such concepts might be relatively simple or not terribly distinctive, while others really stand out as the product of careful thought about unfamiliar subjects.
The new album Ultima Requies by the Italian black metal band Feralia falls into the latter category. Press materials circulated by ATMF (the label that will release the record later this month) describe the album as one “drawing from arcane and occult dimensions tied to the archaic Roman world,” in which “each composition unfolds as a passage, evoking forgotten rites, liminal states and the tension between life and death, presence and absence.”
Even the album’s frightening cover art fits into the narrative. To quote again from the press materials:
The artwork of Ultima Requies [depicts] a reinterpretation of the necromantic ritual of Erichto, the Thessalian witch described in De Bello Civili by Lucan. A figure feared even by the gods, Erichto was said to raise fallen soldiers from the battlefield during one of the most turbulent phases of Roman civil war. This imagery embodies the album’s core: a confrontation with death not as an end, but as a threshold to forbidden knowledge. Continue reading »
