Forged in the uncompromising Columbian underground, relocated to the gentler environs of Seattle, but with a distinctly cold, North European sensibility to their sound of late, Inquisition’s recent rise to one of the best-selling, gig-packing bands in the black metal scene has followed the least obvious and most bewildering of paths.
A two-piece comprising Dagon on guitar and vocals and Incubus on drums, Inquisition’s stripped-down yet still expansive sound is steeped in occult, Satanic arcana. Their tempestuous invocations still carry much of the unflinching oddness that marked out their earlier releases, but now it’s channelled through sloshing, ritualised riffs that form an unlikely alliance between the near-autistic slavering of Beherit and the blizzard-churn of Abbath, but with an unfathomable, mystic sensibility all their own.
After the massive, and unpredictable success of 2013’s Obscure Verses For The Multiverse, Inquisition are preparing to return to this plane on August 26 – via the inter-dimensional portal known as Season Of Mist Records – with an eagerly-awaited follow-up. Pithily titled Bloodshed Across The Empyrean Altar Beyond The Celestial Zenith, its typically counter-intuitive yet imperiously compelling mantras look set to cement their dominance on the black-hearted battallions worldwide. Praise the implacable ones, because we have an exclusive preview in the form of Wings Of Anu, a track that sounds like being caught in the middle of an admittedly groovy sandstorm on the outer plains of Hell, and whose effect isn’t just one of sonic trepanation, it’ll turn your cranium into a sieve.
“[Anu] is the god of all stars, creator of all gods and ruler of all heavens, offer the band by way of guidance. “His wings have extended to earth in the form of wings in flying motion visiting us since we were the seeds of his creation. The wings are many and they watch upon us in silence from the skies that connect through portals of time.”
So retune your brain to the infinite facets of existence, summon up a host of interspatial entities and lose whatever sanity you have left to Wings Of Anu below!
Set your space-time co-ordinates to Inquisition’s Facebook page here
And entice Bloodshed Across The Empyrean Altar Beyond The Celestial Zenith from the aether here!
