We’ve all had the experience of being misled by PR descriptions of forthcoming metallic extremity, when the night-blooming rhetoric proves to be an exaggeration or a calculated inaccuracy. And so we take such linguistic previews with a grain of salt, even when they generate a reflexive eagerness to listen.

In the case of the new album by the Italian death metal band Hadit (from Varese), the advance press variously portrays the music as “an obfuscating spell of dark cosmological death metal destruction”, “occult ritualistic divinations of total aural chaos”, “sonically annihilating and aesthetically majestic”, “impenetrable and supernatural”, and “hallucinations shrouded in mysticism and esotericism”.

How sad it would be if such evocative and enticing written flourishes weren’t well-founded! Even though Hadit’s last release, the 2015 EP Introspective Contemplation of the Microcosmus, already provided a solid foundation for those descriptions, that was six years ago after all. The question is whether their debut full-length, With Joy and Ardour Through the Incommensurable Path, lives up to the advance billing.

Well, you know where we’re going with this: The answer is Hell Yes It Does. The fact that it’s being jointly released (on May 7th) by such tasteful labels as Caligari Records, Sentient Ruin, and Terror From Hell Records is evidence of that, and so is the song we’re premiering today: “The Quest for Hearts and Conquest of Time“. Continue reading »