The thing is, for this author at least, Furia has not once sounded the same. They first hit the radar with Martwa polska jesień (Dead Polish autumn) in 2007, which was being passed around solely on the strength of its conventionality. Yes, it was powerful black metal from a country with a storied history in the genre, but there wasn’t much there that stood out as different at the time, aside from the occasional lengthy and clean instrumental passage.

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Yet going from 2016 to Huta Luna, due out October 10^th on Polish powerhouse Pagan Records, couldn’t be more of a step change, and a pretty exciting one at that. You see, where Księżyc milczy luty plodded about in abject misery, Furia’s first full-length in seven years is practically shorn of all negative emotions – and absolutely fucking furious to boot [read our interview with Furia here].

Not furious in the sense of anger specifically – we reckon that would count as a negative emotion – but in the playing. The majority of songs on Huta Luna clock in under four minutes and might average around 3:20. Coincidentally, the length of a good pop song. We count this as a wise decision because, frankly, we’d be astounded if any band could maintain this level of assault on the senses for the length of extreme metal’s more meandering passages.

While Furia’s fury manifests in the blistering blast beats and fret-defying guitars, the music itself speaks a different language, one of triumph and, dare we say, even joy. Speaking for myself here, but black metal that moves the listener to raise a fist, not in violence but in appreciation of life for all its absurdity, the highs and the rock-bottoms, is why I still find myself listening to it. Much in the same way that a death metal song describing graphic atrocities against the human body has me twerking in the kitchen.

Huta Luna feels as though Furia has jammed the fuck out of their Finnish counterparts in Havukruunu and thought they could not only play faster, but also much harder and looser. This means Furia’s new album could fall under what we would tentatively describe as “adventure metal” – black metal that venerates the spirit of adventure, swords, fantasy, horseback fighting, touching grass, and so on.

But the truth is that’s probably the “nekrofolk” talking – how the band would prefer to describe their music – rather than anything of strict thematic relevance. Though this term might cast you in mind of Furia’s utterly degenerate compatriots Dead Raven Choir, Huta Luna instead seems intent on conquering and overcoming life’s personal and social tribulations instead of dwelling on the filth of humanity. But nor is this Moonsorrow’s pomp and synthesizer cheese. It’s earthy, vital, and relatable, touching down somewhere in the no-man’s-land between early Liturgy and later Graveland.

The opener, “Zamawianie trzecie” (Third Order), kicks off with a blast of feedback, a brief moment of spoken word, then a snap of the fingers – and it is totally balls to the wall from there for the next half hour. There isn’t a shred of pessimism, hopelessness, apathy, or any of these things we find so commonly expressed in black metal. Just raw ecstasy.

Huta Luna simply doesn’t let up. Where Furia’s previous album seemed concerned with the low end, they now seem transfixed on high frequencies, traveling the length of the neck in seconds to bring a glistening, psychedelic edge to proceedings.

Take “Swawola niewola” (who knew there was such a catchy way to say “Free-spirited bondage” on Earth?), which drenches high notes in delay and reverb to create this swirling kaleidoscope of true grit. Don’t forget to join in the gang chant of the song’s title, though. Also scream “Na koń!” (On horse!) repeatedly for the next track, once again feeding into that “adventure metal” paradigm we described, which harbors an almost Western atmosphere in the way the guitars wobble. Mount up, and ride into battle against whatever personal demons you wish to run down.

Furia’s infectious melodies and breakneck pace continue unabated for eight tracks until “Gore!” eventually trips over its galloping rhythms and breaks through into… a half-hour ambient drone track?

This is a major surprise for an already left-field album. If you like your black metal fearlessly inverting expectations, it’s a guaranteed fuck on the first date. It’s almost incomprehensible how we got here compared to where Furia has come from, yet here we are, and it’s very, very good.

—Richard Currie

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Huta Luna is out now via Pagan Records.

Such a statement might seem misleading when initially confronted with the pugnacious salvoes frontloading the album (which you can stream here early ahead of its Tuesday release), a series of coruscating whiplash instigators screaming pure metal vengeance and brokering a swift about-turn from the abstract melodramas of 2021’s W śnialni.

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Yet while on the surface rage-fuelled maelstroms such as “Zamawianie trzecie” and “Wracaj” throwback to the band’s more prosaic black metal beginnings, they also cede several seditious folk-indebted elements running concurrent with Furia’s idiosyncratic evolution: rippling, trebly guitar lines resemble a turbo-charged balalaika on ‘Swawola niewola’, conjuring a subterranean flux harvested from the melodic echoes of traditional Polish country-song, while the string-mauling spaghetti-western twangs of “Na koń!” subvert that bludgeoning volley’s rampant mantra. 

Individual tracks begin to congeal into a homogenous surge, incubating an ever-dilating micro-climate which Nihil identifies as a “special form of ambient music,” forging a strident full-throttle counterpart to Huta Luna’s jaw-dropping endgame.

For more than 30 minutes, “Księżyc, czyli Słonce” represents the apogee, thus far, of Furia’s mission to “create a space through sets of sounds and noises, rather than music itself, for analysing experiences, feelings and thoughts.” Between them Nihil, A, Sars and Namtar annex a dread nether-zone populated by pernicious shadow demons and whispered Delphian conspiracies, a Borgesian alternate unreality where Nurse With Wound and Flying Saucer Attack hook-up for a soundtrack to a bizarro Parajanov ritual – pregnant with phantasmal drones, delay-scrambled distress signals, disembodied voices and atrophying gongs – giving the psyche free rein, providing potent catalysts for intravenous mood conduction. 

But as for the track’s exact meaning, Nihil remains characteristically reticent: “I don’t want to reveal too much,” he explains. “That would strip our work of all the elements which are intentionally not made explicit. It would destroy it.”

-Spencer Grady

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Huta Luna releases October 10th via Pagan Records.

Crafting a full-length album can happen in a lot of different ways. Sometimes, it’s just some good songs put in an order that makes sense. At other times, an album is a carefully-layered journey built to evoke specific themes and designed to tell an essential story. Neither approach is necessarily better, but Polish black/folk metal pagans Varmia follow the latter path on their new album Nie nas widzę, out today, and the result is something exceptional. Nie nas widzę renders ancient Baltic spiritual traditions as an elemental suite, breaking a story of nature’s progression into four movements – fire, sun, moon, and water. Like its inspirational forces, the record trades in fury and beauty in equal measure, combining ritualistic black metal with traditional instruments, singing methods, and even field recordings.

Beyond its thematic nature, Nie nas widzę packs a punch, imbuing its black metal with a resonant low-end to balance the guitar and vocal harmonies in play. The traditional instruments used, such as the tagelharpa, goat horn, wood tuba and krivula — I’ll admit I don’t recognize any of those — add even another layer to this, and hearing completely new instruments play haunting leads over extremely riff-heavy black metal is a nearly religious experience.

Nie nas widzę‘s mystical sound evokes the powerful forces of nature that it conceptually describes. The scorching sun, the fathomless sea: Varmia channels the undeniable power of the world around us.

To help outline the concepts at play, vocalist/guitarist Lasota has provided a track-by-track rundown of the album – keep reading below as you listen.

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‘I’ – “The opening of the cult of Fire. You can hear real fire and the band playing when sitting around it. It’s a very primal gathering. The birthplace for the myths, legends, and even entire cults. These acoustic songs are introductions to the four chapters of the album and if you listen carefully, you can spot the musical connections between it and the next two tracks. Each of these songs is a live performance recorded at the specific location which corresponds with the subject of the album’s chapter.”

‘SVA’ – “This is the anthem for Fire. Our forefathers used to burn bodies on the piles. Their ashes spread across the wilderness, roaming into eternity. That was a glorious, maybe even ecstatic death. Fire also gives shelter from the cold and wild beasts. But whenever it burns, it burns with might. Such is that song. Rhythms galloping as flames, chasing the haunting melodies. There’s even a “duel” of leads between tagelharpa and the guitar. When we recorded that part, the flock of birds started screaming in the background. We didn’t want to correct mother nature, so we left that in the recording.”

‘agre’ – “Our second single ‘agre’ shows that the fire inside can burn more severely than the real flame. Especially when it’s caused by loss or bitter disappointment. ‘agre’ can be read as an abbreviation from ‘agrest’, which is a popular bitter-sweet fruit. It could also mean ‘aggression’. Blossom, aggression.”

‘II’ – “The warmth and the light of fire is manifested in the Sun. In our forefathers tongue the Sun was called Saule and was considered a woman. The bringer of life, security, and prosperity. This piece was performed and recorded in the bright light of day near an old barn. You can hear the surroundings and the atmosphere around that performance. This is the sound of the daylight in our land. But to hear that, you need to escape civilization by at least 30 kilometres. The further the better.”

‘KAD SAULE DIV’ – “Until the Sun shines. This is the anthem for Saule. Until she shines, we stay fierce. Musically speaking, this track could be labelled as black heavy metal. Very simplistic in the riffing, making your head bang. It should flow and fill the air with force. If it was possible, we’d have gathered 100+ men to scream the words of the refrain.”

‘swaixtan’ – “The shining. Through the light we can see things and people for what they are. But it can also blind us. Through life we learn how to use that light of enlightenment. But usually what we see is so different from what we expected. This song leans toward doom metal a bit, but the refrain stays in a shamanic mantra. The closing section has a primeval dance touch to it. A condemned dance macabre. Vocals for this song were recorded at two locations; at the castle and in our own ‘dungeon’ hall.”

‘III’ – “The Sun has set, and the fire is gone. The coldness of the night has sneaked into the same barn that we played in. Hear the voices of the surroundings and contemplate the wind. The location is the same, but the background sounds totally different. It’s stunning how easily nature can be a part of the music if only you let her. Some of these sounds you hear sneaked into the record almost musically.”

‘DIES TREMOR’ – “The day of terror. The day of the Moon – Meness. Our ancestors believed that he was stealing Saule for the night and hence there was no light then. The prince of the night, unknown and all that is magic. This is the anthem for the ruler of the black sky. There is some dancing vibe that appears again. Hear the break in the middle of the song and imagine the ritualistic circle of people that moves to this melody.”

‘kres’ – “Borderland. This term is very commonly used in Warmia as it has historical context. Investigate the Eastern Borderlands topic if you’re interested in that. It also means the end, the verge. The verge of darkness in which we stay under the reign of Meness. That ‘angelic’ string instrument you can hear is the most simple and archaic lyre. This chordophone was used under many names in all of Europe. In our lands it was known as kantele.”

‘IV’ – “Water is essential to all life and all cults. But in our case, it is as well the very heart of the landscape that we live in. Crystal clear and deep, it is subject to so many taboos, that it’s impossible to know them all. We gathered near the stream and played this song there in the middle of the night. The moisture in the air made it almost impossible to get the proper intonation out of the instruments. But this is how it sounds when you play near the water.”

‘DAINA 4’ – “Fourth and the last anthem, praising the might of the waves. As fire, they can save life and destroy it. To tame that force in their favour, our forefathers were practicing various sacrifices. Oak was their most sacred tree, and so this song’s words say that the time has come to feed it with blood. The lead section played on the bukkehorn has almost a symphonic touch to it. The Old Prussian water deity is called by the name in this song.”

‘poświat’ – “Afterworld. The last stop of this story couldn’t be anywhere else than into eternity. The waves of the mighty Baltic Sea accepted the ashes of sacrifice and took them to the depths. This song’s structure is like a river. The tempos change often, the character shifts. Starting like an innocent spring but in the end falling into the sea with terrifying force. As in the first anthem SVA, here the instrumental lead appears again in the middle of the song. This time between the guitar and bukkehorn. It appears fast under the storming blast beat, but through the simplicity of the melody it hammers into your head mercilessly. After listening to that song (and the whole album) to the end, revisit and play Track 3 from our prolog EP. A lot of musical correlations will unfold that way.”

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Nie nas widzę released today via M-Theory Audio.

It’s tough to boil down Hegemone‘s upcoming album Voyance down to small, finite sentences—conceptually and musically, it’s simply immense. The Polish band uses an impressively vast language of blackened post-metal and sludge to battle enormous ideas on their third album, wallowing in puddles of ambient misery and struggling through full-on black metal storms. Voyance expresses sadness, certainly, but the grief-stricken tonality has a thoughtful side, too. Keep your mind open as you listen, and perhaps there’s lessons to learn amongst the despair.

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One such lesson: the band’s mastery of album flow and transitions. One personal highlight of the record is the beginning of “Inference”: the heartbreaking prior track “Abeyance” ends with crackling noise, which gains outdoor ambience as “Inference” begins, connecting the two seamlessly. A musing clean melody starts to build on this new track, but it’s cut off, violently, by vocals burbling with caustic rage, refusing to be withheld any longer. Guitars provoke and seethe while synthesizers soothe, set to intense percussion that remains hypnotizingly intricate throughout the track.

Voyance is a constant wellspring of new sounds and textures, sometimes coming across as brief flashes of delight and hope amongst the somber proceedings, but at other points serving as ominous hints at new lows to come. Listening to it comes with a feeling of discovery, of finding something new, and the oddity of that within an album generally architected as a “wall of sadness” only sharpens this sensation.

The band comments:

“Voyance” is for us a step into the desert. Our interpretation of religiosity and questions about the meaning of our faiths. When creating sounds of desperation, we were looking for new sounds as well as trying to include in the songs what we like best – a wall of sadness. We invite you to share moments of despair with us.

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Voyance releases September 15th via Brucia Records.

It’s easy to be skeptical of thrash metal in 2022 following decades of burnout, tired rehashes, and unfunny, energy-less hacks profaning the altar the classics set up in an uncool way. Poland has been a minor mecca for ancient necromantic steel in recent years, however, and youngsters Gallower understand that a certain fire is needed to make this stuff without it being a snoozefest; their new short-length Eastern Witchcraft is a pleasure of hard-hitting evil thrash the old way, unafraid to be truly ferocious despite a great ear for catchiness and memorability that is often lost when bands attempt a more relentless approach.

“Witchcraft” is a great word to toss into the name of the release, because storming witching metal is very much what’s happening on this killer new mLP. The vocals drop with a speed of delivery that’s almost more Walkyier than Angelripper despite the clear hints of Sodom in their sound, and melodic solos and unashamed hints of even older heavy and speed metal keep Gallower from falling into the same stale traps that similar bands so often stagnate in.

At only 16 minutes long this is a nice little treat both to sate a thirst for more Gallower in between albums and also just to dive into their sound for the uninitiated. Give it a listen and read the band’s thoughts on the release in the quote below:

After the debut album Behold the Realm of Darkness the time has finally come to release our new Mini LP Eastern Witchcraft Infused with thrashing speed mixed with dangerous doze of ancient black magic, this record brings old visions of blackened thrash. Eastern Witchcraft reaps your soul, the only salvation you may find in a prayer to the old Speed Metal Godz!

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Eastern Witchcraft releases July 29th via Dying Victims Productions.

]]> https://www.invisibleoranges.com/s-interview/ Tue, 05 Apr 2022 17:00:44 +0000 https://www.invisibleoranges.com/s-interview/

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Polish experimental artist -S- (formerly just S) has been a captivating entity since its initial unveiling in 2013 on the Dead Body Temple and Death Knell Prod labels. An unusual mixture of bass, drums, howling vocals, and clarinet, -S- takes black metal and distills it into an atmosphere, an idea, and expels it as violently as possible. Using tension as a weapon, -S- bends the listener’s psyche to a splintering point. Paired with gruesome artwork, -S-‘s untitled debut was a peculiarity which was then met with an equally unsettling silence.

Almost a decade after the project’s debut, -S- returns with the confusing Dom, w którym mieszkał Wąż (translates to “A House Where Dwelled A Snake”). Finding comfort in a more surreal world, Dom, w którym mieszkał Wąż shows -S- approaching a precipice in which the listener’s own mental health can be called into question, let alone its performers. Heavy in their own way, -S-‘s clean, ambiance-forward sound is a descent into a bizarre world of shouting and rumbling. Listen to an exclusive premiere of “Piorunoschron” and read an interview with the band below.

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-S- uses atypical instrumentation to express something akin to black metal. What first led to you choosing bass and woodwinds (saxophone and clarinet) as primary instruments for this sound?

First of all, note that we don’t use the saxophone. It is the sound of the clarinet that marks -S- specificity right now. It has this pensive touch that no other woodwind instrument has.

But let’s recap. The choice of instrumentation happened accidentally to a large extent. -S- started as a duo eight years ago. I played bass and had been learning drums by then and found out the heavy-delayed bass sound to fit my idea and playing style. After moving to Wrocław I met a friend who shared similar musical and philosophical interests and happened to play clarinet, despite the fact that he has been a fan of orthodox black metal. For some time we just experimented with the sound. After a while we decided that eventually we didn’t need any other instrument/member to complete our vision (although a guitarist had been considered), since in that case the less could be more. Through this simplified instrumentation we found a new way to express also our other important musical inspirations we shared: dark ambient, cold wave, jazz, funk, post-rock, classical and minimalistic music.

Although Bohren & Der Club of Gore, Miles’ Ascenseur pour l’échafaud soundtrack and Badalamenti’s compositions for “Twin Peaks” were major inspirations for us in imagining the prefered usage of woodwinds, it is the way in which Roger Döring from the Dictaphone project enchanted clarinet into minimalistic electronics that got us pinned down to this instrument definitely. For the newer records I still wanted the clarinet to be used somehow – no matter to what extent – to underline the initial concept. That being said, it’s not excluded that maybe we’ll use sax in the future or that we’ll continue without any woodwinds for some other recordings as well. Right now we perceive -S- as a “drum & bass” core, since the clarinets were recorded by guest musicians.

The heavy bass-and-drums rhythms act in juxtaposition to the woodwinds’ more airy and atmospheric sounds. What were you looking to achieve in pitting these two sounds against each other?

I’d describe my vision as a disquieting, cinematic soundscape that would happen to unite these contradicting universes as you aptly named them: aggressive, dynamic and black metal & funk-driven drums and bass lines and the simple, ambient-like, melancholic, flowing layers of clarinet long notes and melodies. I don’t want to create a perfect harmony here though, it’s all about the play between grooves, melodies and dissonances that would eventually form an unexpectedly coherent and playful style.

The band’s name, a single letter in length, leaves a lot to interpretation. What does “-S-” mean in relation to this project?

This “name” came first of all as a dream. As the sigil in a form you can see on the cover of the first album, with a gnostic eye in the center caught up between two ribbons of broken infinities. By that time the project concept had been deeply rooted in Gnosticism and occultism and this symbol neatly captured that aspect.

The “-S-” notation is a necessary simplification of this symbol. You can also note that on the later emanations of the project we changed it, as our inspirations and ideas shifted towards less precisely defined occultism. It was i.e. because of the line-up shift and the fact that we moved away from the gnostic and satanic themes and found wider and more relevant inspirations.
Hence you can read the -S- notion as a shortening for “sigil.” Indeed it is a sigil in itself as it changes its content and context with every album. The title and lyrics grant it a new meaning, so you should read the whole album as a particular piece and use that sigil as a key to visualize and meditate on the stuff we’re playing about.

You create obscure soundscapes and textures, resulting in an uncomfortable listen. How do you want the listener to react to your music?

We’re still developing the style we’d like the -S- to stand for in the greatest measure. And in the recent albums you can still actually only hear that to some extent. The ideas are being merged as we slowly shift from creating the music for ourselves and a form of intimate expression without particular end, towards something that could be arranged and directed towards the listener with some clearer intention.

I don’t reckon our music to be “uncomfortable,” I rather perceive it as quite straightforward and funky (even if in some gnarled sense). I’d like to create an immersive, deep, and disturbing atmosphere for the listener. In fact that’s why we call our albums “meditations,” because for us this is a musical meditation and practice. It should eventually lead to being able to feel comfort in discomfort, a peace in unrest, and vice versa. I’d like the listening to that stuff to be an exercise in musical imagination and in emotional consciousness, the way I treat the music personally.

This is the -S- project’s second full-length. The first featured particularly gruesome art, but Dom, w którym mieszkał Wąż features something more surreal. How does visual art interplay with -S- core? With such an unusual and singular style, how would you classify -S-? Is this something to which you pay any mind?

The visual side of our work has not been clearly defined from the beginning. It is still something we’re experimenting with and looking for a proper style and inspiration. As I’ve said, each album so far presents a bit different approach towards the musical style we aim at carving, so each one requires a different topping. Personally I have quite a clear vision of how I’d like the cover art and design to look like, but I lack proper skills and time to do it alone. That’s why finally I decided to give that piece of work either to dead artists (as with the “Zabijanie czasu”) or the living ones that would improvise to a given theme. The work of Bartosz Katastrofa for the new album is actually a really successful example of the latter. With his proposal he brought a new perspective to the music and the concept itself. This surrealistic touch is something we’ll most likely keep for a longer while. My sense is that we either go more abstract or mix Hoppe’s spatial melancholy with unobvious occult motifs. Or both.

So yes, we do pay attention to the subject of “style,” but now it’s more focused on music itself than the visual side. Musically we have quite a clear vision of what we’d like to achieve and develop musically. -S- plays “dark funk” at its core, but in the recent albums this aspect is not fully grasped yet, as other influences are more apparent, hence we implement them to some extent within the albums descriptions. But ultimately that’s the desired form we’d like to crystalize. This should actually happen soon as we’re finishing material that would convey this idea in the most straightforward way to date.

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Dom, w którym mieszkał Wąż releases April 22nd on I, Voidhanger Records.

]]> https://www.invisibleoranges.com/skinliv-vermisst-split/ Thu, 27 Jan 2022 19:00:57 +0000 https://www.invisibleoranges.com/skinliv-vermisst-split/

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Denmark’s Skinliv (which I believe is tangentially related to the prolific Korpsånd circle) and Poland’s Vermisst both operate in a similar sphere; both bands compose ethereal takes on black metal, often relying on keyboards to “fill in the cracks” where guitars, vocals, drums, and bass might not quite reach. This doesn’t make them symphonic, though, just to be clear, as both acts operate on a subtler level than their VST-laden cousins–both Vermisst and Skinliv look towards atmosphere as a primary, often doubled with some sort of aggression, be it a riff-after-riff onslaught or a sinister melody which sneaks its way through to the surface.

Skinliv’s half of their impending split LP with Vermisst presents itself as a more traditional black metal outing, though the aforementioned keys and the occasional strange vocal sound definitely keep this exciting. Definitely on the riffier end of the black metal spectrum, Skinliv’s approach is menacing, but aged, sounding as if it was recorded to tape long ago and left in a closet for an unexpecting relative to find years later. As such, there is a “rounded” affectation to Skinliv’s half of this split–not quite sharp, but instead weathered and aged. A standout moment would definitely be the keyboard-led groove about three quarters of the way through their second of four untitled tracks.

Vermisst, on the other hand, takes the atmospheres at which Skinliv hints and takes them to new heights, operating as an atmospheric black metal band (in the 1990s sense) rather than something riff-adorned and somewhat straightforward. Performing at a slower pace than their splitmates, “Incantations of the Crimson Twilight,” the twelve-minute black metal half of Vemisst’s side, drones with abject misery. Raw, obscure, and uncompromising, Vermisst’s take on black metal draws from an ancient pool of ethereal might. Following this up with an equally-as-lengthy dungeon synth track, Vermisst ends this split LP on a calm but unsettling note; “Weeping from the Old Labyrinthian Spire” takes the listener on an adventure through the darkened halls of an abandoned castle, flying through the ruins to a looming spire above a dead kingdom.

Listen to an exclusive pre-release stream of the Skinliv and Vermisst split below.

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Nebular Carcoma · Skinliv / Vermisst – Split LP

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The Vemisst and Skinliv split releases January 31st on Nebular Carcoma Records.

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]]> https://www.invisibleoranges.com/batushka-ep-premiere/ Fri, 12 Mar 2021 20:00:31 +0000 https://www.invisibleoranges.com/batushka-ep-premiere/

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Polish black metal band Batushka came crashing into the metal world with their classic 2015 album Литоургиiа. Unfortunately, drama eclipsed the band in 2018 when half of the original Batushka duo vocalist Bartłomiej “Барфоломей” Krysiuk signed to Metal Blade and carried on the band’s name with its 2018 album Господи. Other half, multi-instrumentalist Krzysztof “Христофор” Drabikowski, has since made attempts to release music under the Batushka name, specifically in 2019 with the Панихида, but was met with legal action over the use of the name. As the battle wears on behind closed doors, Krysiuk shows no signs of slowing down.

Batushka has since released the Раскол EP in 2020 and a live album titled Черная Литургия recorded as a part of the Colombian Festival Rock al Parque livestream event. Today we’re premiering the next chapter of the Batushka saga in the form of the band’s brand-new EP Царю Небесный. Царю Небесный finds Batushka at its most aggressive to date, seemingly tearing the veil off their usual reverent religious selves and charging headlong down the aisle and straight out into the freezing cold.

Coupled with guest appearances from several musicians from regional folk groups and orchestra and an equally-cold looking cover art piece designed by long-time collaborator Maciej Szupica, Царю Небесный simply has more weight to it than previous releases. While I’m sure there will always be Литоургиiа-era purists crying for a return to the band’s original duo, Царю Небесный is an undeniable new landmark for the band that should quiet most of those voices. Listen to an exclusive pre-release stream of Царю Небесный below.

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Царю Небесный is out March 19. Pre-orders are available through Witching Hour Productions and through Bandcamp.

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]]> https://www.invisibleoranges.com/fleshworld-the-essence-premiere/ Thu, 10 Oct 2019 20:18:56 +0000 https://www.invisibleoranges.com/fleshworld-the-essence-premiere/

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If there’s anything better than sludge to dirty up post-hardcore’s already nasty aesthetic and attitude, then Fleshworld hasn’t found it yet. This Polish five-piece weaves plenty of groovy, hard-hitting oomph with all the resolute mud and grit it takes for artistic abstraction; all the while, the tunes remain clear-cut and true without descending into meaningless fuzz. It all takes place on Fleshworld’s The Essence Has Changed, But the Details Remain, a seven-track ripper of an album which hits shelves tomorrow. We’ve got the full stream below to inflict your ears with the band’s voracious attitude for, well, sounding mean as fuck. Fans of bands on Throatruiner — As We Draw and Plebian Grandstand come to mind — will find plenty to enjoy on The Essence Has Changed, But the Details Remain. Arguably, Fleshworld takes it a level above their peers with just the sheer intensity of their playing. The band is unafraid to explore significant layering among extremely harsh vocals, all of which combines into a stimulating headtrip with the emotional fluidity that post-hardcore always seems to welcome (and that sludge benefits from greatly).

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The Essence Has Changed, But the Details Remain releases tomorrow via This Charming Man Records.

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Support Invisible Oranges on Patreon and check out our merch.

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