Out now is UK black metal act Ante-Inferno‘s third album, Death’s Soliloquy, on Vendetta Records, alongside news of European tour dates this December.
Also, out now as a single with a haunting artwork video is ‘The Cavernous Blackness Of Night’. Commenting on the single, Kai, the band’s lyricist, vocalist and guitarist, said: “As a child, I was fascinated by the lurid covers of some of my dad’s books — in particular, his volumes of H.P. Lovecraft stories. My favourite was possibly the cover of Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, which depicted a horrid, little, grinning impish creature sitting atop a tower of gore-soaked, decapitated heads, their mouths hung open in a death yawn. I’ve been a morbid little fuck for as long as I can remember… Anyway, the song is less inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft than by that particular cover. A foul, inhuman thing that resides in the marshland and sadistically murders those foolish enough to enter its abode. A little more supernatural than the subjects of the other songs on the album, it is no-less macabre in the grim tale it recounts.”
Now with a fully established line-up, the North Yorkshire four-piece has delivered a malevolent hammer strike to the face of all who thought they would continue to mellow after the success of the atmospheric and otherworldly second album Antediluvian Dreamscapes. Death’s Soliloquy harnesses the bestial might of traditional black metal and weaves it with the haunting atmospheric sound the band is known for, and in doing so takes the listener on an anguished, hysterical descent into the blackened emptiness of the grave.
Death’s Soliloquy is an exploration of Kai’s journey through depression and hopelessness, through obsessive thoughts of the most morbid and macabre nature — thoughts of self-destruction interwoven with the most appalling nightmares, broken hopes and unacted desires. As old lives are shed and new lives struggle to take form, there is always a war raging within and without — a war that can never truly be won but may, at any moment, be lost for all eternity.
As Kai explained: “If there are two principal themes tying this album together, they are death—or rather, an inescapable fixation with death—and mental illness. I wanted to explore the last thoughts and visions of those about to meet their demise, however grisly, haunting or lonely that demise might be. In this way, death speaks through the tortured imaginings of those it is about to take. We become subject to Death’s Soliloquy – or at least a portion of it – for that poem is as long as the ever-expanding universe is vast.
‘The Cavernous Blackness of Night’ sums up the album’s themes perfectly. We are taken to the site of a suicide by hanging. A body swings from the bough of a tree, and we witness the very last thing that poor soul witnessed before they took their final, fatal step. We see the wind stirring the leaves of a willow, and causing the grass to bow. A thistle shakes solemnly. We see the final rays of the setting sun bleed across the darkening sky, and feel the warmth of those rays upon our skin before we, too, give ourselves up to that eternal darkness.”
Death’s Soliloquy is available on CD, vinyl and digital formats.
Ante-Inferno were on tour with Worm (US) in Europe this October, and will be playing dates with the German act Imha Tarikat, in December, while select appearances will feature support from Ultima Necat. They play Manchester on 30th November.
