Odoacer Peers at the Rot Within "The Unkindest Cut" (Video Premiere)

What pulses at the center of the UK black metal enigma Odoacer is something not as straightforward as hate: it’s a dark, resigned disdain. The sentiment festers, rather than blazes, and the malignant soundscape it gives rise to isn’t a pointed attack, it’s outright rejection. Odoacer has moved beyond futile rage; the psychedelic-tinged and expressive black metal found on their 2020 debut There the Vultures Will Gather takes a seething, depressive slant on the genre that feels more appropriate for the times we find ourselves in.

To vividly illustrate that point of view, Odoacer worked with “No One,” of UK black metal act The Sun’s Journey Through The Night, to create an abstract, surreal visualization of “The Unkindest Cut,” from There the Vultures Will Gather. Watch it below with our exclusive premiere:

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While human beings have a propensity to look for patterns even in the most chaotic sequences, it’s hard to ignore how the shadows that flicker across this video feel like fingers grasping at the viewer, and how the cracks and fault line in the scenery start to merge with the creases in the disembodied mouth that screams out the lyrics to the song. It becomes difficult to distinguish what’s animate versus inanimate, and at the same time, the dour and unceasing tremolo riffing on “The Unkindest Cut” starts to merge into the near-constant rasped lyrics, two sonic tributaries flowing into a single miasmic river. As our comprehension falters among this onrush, tortured landscapes meet anguished flesh, joining everything together into a discontent mass.

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There the Vultures Will Gather released on September 4th, 2020 via Church Road Records, and you can pick up new Odoacer merch here.