North Yorkshire, UK; 2 September 2024: UK black metal act Ante-Inferno have unveiled the first track from their upcoming third album “Death’s Soliloquy”, set for release on 22nd November 2024 via Vendetta Records.
Watch the haunting artwork video to the track “The Cavernous Blackness of Night” below.
Now with a fully established line-up, the four-piece have 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 intricately weaves it with the haunting majesty of the 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 lyricist 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…
Kai explains:
“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.”
