[news] I, Voidhanger Records - new albums out on February 2016

Here there are three upcoming albums via I, Voidhanger Records around February 2016

THE WAKEDEAD GATHERING - Fuscus: Strings of the Black Lyre

 

Deep in the primordial darkness of the swamp, the Great Grey Witch watches and waits for her time for revenge...

THE WAKEDEAD GATHERING's third full-length album, “Fuscus: Strings of The Black Lyre” presents the story of a witch hunt that turns hunter into prey and the children of those so-called “righteous” perpetrators into something… not entirely human! Visually accompanied by the terrifying artwork of Karmazid, the sounds and screams on this album portray the anguish of victim and aggressor alike.

Although the lyrical contents could remind of King Diamond's horror concepts, with “Fuscus: Strings of The Black Lyre” THE WAKEDEAD GATHERING continue on the usual path of dark death metal, veering from time to time into strange territories tinged with black metal (“Blood From The Earth”) and even funeral doom (the incipit of the album's closing track, “An Ancient Tradition”). Tortured vocals and murky tones emanate from the swamp and out through the night air to invade the minds of those unfortunate enough to bear witness to the nightmare.

To those who would dismiss scientific inquiry in favour of dogmatic religious fanaticism, these tracks send a warning and a sense of dread that what you abused and left to rot may come back to destroy you...

Source : https://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/fuscus-strings-of-the-black-lyre

ECFERUS - Pangaea

Hailing from Indiana, USA, and influenced by evolutionary anthropology and primitive myth, ECFERUS explore the psyche of early humans through a vehicle of exciting and unpredictable atmospheric black metal. Producing four releases in under a year, ECFERUS' sole member, Alp, has kept a prolific pace while exploring different musical approaches each time. With “Pangaea”, the band's second full-length album, Alp employs an unusual writing method, intermittently using letter substitution methods to create the impression of a lost primitive language. "Pangaea" continues Alp's musical evolution and represents a step up in composition and production skills while venturing into more progressive black metal territory.

Wrapped in a colourful cover commissioned to Romanian artist Luciana Nedelea, "Pangaea" uses a mythological point-of-view to tell the story of a planet at war with its occupants. The tortured main character, Pangaea, is ripped apart into separate continents by Earth so as to prevent the begetting of creatures with potential too powerful to be trusted. Acting out of spite, Pangaea nurtures humanity's rise to power until their passive occupation mutates into indefensible planetary malice. Using wide dynamic shifts and changes in meter, with “Pangaea” ECFERUS creates the musical equivalent of an accelerated planetary evolution, depicting the fury of the elements and an Earth painfully coming to life.

Source : https://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/pangaea

VOIDCRAEFT -  Ἕβελ

A German one-man project dealing with themes of emptiness, renunciation and the human condition in general, VOIDCRAEFT play black metal with great emphasis on crude, dissonant riffs that enhance the hypnotic nature of their twisted melodies. Their third and most refined full-length album – the first on I, Voidhanger Records – is called Ἕβελ and is certainly peculiar in that all its lyrics are written and sang in Biblical Hebrew and Koine Greek. The album was largely inspired by a literary endeavour in which VOIDCRAEFT read all of the New Testament and the Hebrew Bible. “The ordeal lasted for seven months,” the band's sole member recalls. “Since I have a keen interest in foreign languages, I did not only read the English translations but also the Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic sources every now and then. I was constantly making notes, which I later reassembled and slightly modified to write the lyrics for this release.”

Though significantly far from being another occult or religious black metal album, Ἕβελ is wrapped in a dark and disturbing aura like only Deathspell Omega and Nightbringer are able to create, a fitting soundtrack to the dreadful lyrical sources. “I was particularly impressed by Job and Ecclesiastes, early examples of Jewish existentialism,” says VOIDCRAEFT. “According to their bleak theology, Humanity is portrayed as the subject of a cryptic God who rewards the wicked and punishes the faithful. The laws he gave to man are ultimately meaningless because he does not care whether we choose to obey or ignore them. Born into an equally meaningless world, we are stuck in an endless cycle of birth, suffering and death, pursuing vain things such as wealth and social status, all of which are but a breath; that is, temporary and ultimately worthless.”

This figurative usage of the Hebrew term for breath or vapour, which is hevel or havel, also inspired the album title: Ἕβελ is an Ancient Greek transliteration of the aforementioned hevel, and it references both the Hebrew and Greek album segments, which represent the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, respectively.
Aptly described as skin-crawlingly Deathspell-esque, Ἕβελ comes with a stunning cover painting by renowned Norwegian artist Sindre Foss Skancke which is as elegant and mystical as the music itself.

Source : https://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/-