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IO Presents: Castevet (record release show), Vorde, Oneirogen

We’ve been keeping this one on the backburner for a while, but it’s time to push it into the light: Invisible Oranges & Signature Riff will be co-sponsoring Castevet‘s record release show for their excellent new album Obsian tomorrow night (10/25) at Union Pool in Brooklyn.

The normal parlance for such events is “record release party,” but the “party” appellation seems inappropriate for Castevet’s music. A great deal of metal is extroverted — it’s meant to get a room full of people headbanging in sync, so it plays to their expectations and flatters their prejudices. Castevet play introverted metal: meticulous, detail-oriented, and reflective. Obsian took the band years to put together, and the long labor shows. At 36 minutes, it is a short album, but it does not waste a moment. Tension is the watchword here: between space and density, between consonance and dissonance, between darkness and light. It is an emotionally taxing listen, but it’s rewarding in equal measure. Our own Dan Lawrence wrote an excellent full-length review of the album, which you should read if you haven’t.

Castevet are introverted in another way: they rarely play live. It would be nice to see them play out as often as Dysrhythmia or Black Anvil do, but the scarcity of their appearances makes each one more noteworthy. All three musicians in this band are technical marvels, and I’m looking forward to seeing how they replicate Obsian‘s seamless atmospherics and layering in a live context.

Castevet will be joined at Union Pool by the black metal band Vorde and the noise/electronic act Oneirogen. There’s no presale, but the walk-up cover will be $10 (and it’s 21+). I’ll be DJing a bunch of weird metal before and between bands. You can stream all of Obsian below (courtesy of Noisey), along with some Vorde and Oneirogen music. See you there.

— Doug Moore