Feb 172023
 

Many of us, when reading about Verminous Serpent‘s lineup, didn’t need to know anything more in order to be drawn to the music, like iron filings to a big magnet. Knowing only that the band includes Slidhr‘s Joseph Deegan on guitar, Malthusian‘s Matt Bree on drums, and Primordial‘s A.A. Nemtheanga on vocals and bass, was more than enough to ignite interest and intrigue.

What their collaboration has spawned is a 41-minute album named The Malign Covenant, a title that proves to be entirely fitting for this trio’s own collaborative covenant. Not for naught does the advance publicity from Amor Fati Productions (who will release the album on March 17th) describe the music as “a rippling soundworld of lurking dread and sulfurous tension, where intensity is measured not by speed or density but by the hideous sensations that shapeshift within the listener’s subconscious”.

The music proves to be an alchemical cauldron of black metal that’s in some measure primitive and preternatural, muscle-moving and spine-tingling, but also well-calculated to create horrifying visions of mesmeric power, capable of both ascending into vistas of world-threatening calamity and descending into lightless pits of misery and death unending. No pun intended, it makes reflexive and riveting connections to dark, primordial energies that still lurk within us.

As a vivid example of what we’re trying to describe, today we present the album’s second advance track, “Seraphim Falls“. Continue reading »