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Python Stream New Album Astrological Warfare in Full; Out This Week

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New York oldschool grit-metallers Python release their second album, Astrological Warfare, on June 7 and 6 through AnnapurnA Production (EU) and The Ajna Offensive (NA), respectively. And let me run through a quick first impression. You hear opening track “Night Takes All,” with its raw guitar buzz and garage drums, cavernous vocals and periodic Mercyful Fate howls and think you’ve got it figured out: band with tin-can production takes on obscure classic metal — elements of thrash and what would splinter into black metal and doom pervade “Night Takes All” and the subsequent title-track. Their roots are in Italy, so of course there’s a Paul Chain influence to be heard. Easy peasy.

Then the real chicanery starts. The seven-and-a-half-minute “No Coming to the Light,” with its ambient guitar and horror samples, and the acoustic-backed vague echoes, toy piano and whispers of the 8:32 “Into the Mire of Death” — also attributable to a Paul Chain influence, as it happens — showcase a different side to Python that not only expands the context of the opening duo, but makes the entire outing that follows entirely less predictable. There are 12 tracks on Astrological Warfare, and by the time “Into the Mire of Death” is done — again, on a first listen — each one is a mystery waiting to be unlocked. “This Flame Burns Forever” is a crashing headbanger that seems to touch ground, but “Wheels of Blood” once again delves into samples, jingling bells and a cultish experimentalist feel, all incantation and ceremony, fading to even more minimal drone after the halfway point. What seems like a relatively python astrological warfarestraightforward affair — at least in its own way — turns out to be anything but.

“Enemies Bring Honor” seems to find a middle ground between the heretofore separate sides, with copious lo-fi distortion backing howls and shouts with a drumbeat behind, furthering both the filth and the weirdness of the proceedings as a whole, leading to “Aeons Has Fallen,” which takes a more roots-doom approach in its nod, not quite Sabbathian, but maybe given some of Venom‘s early cave-dweller spirit, mixed with a more straight-ahead vocal and riff. By the time they get there, it’s almost a relief, and “Land of Phantoms” continues the thread at least somewhat, with more wailing fuckall over a dirty guitar line, before “No Tomorrow” buzzes out across five basement-dank minutes that in a different context might be punk and might be genius indie, but here are par for the course.

How else to end Astrological Warfare than with two more experimental cuts of atmospheric creep and outright terror? “Burning the Shrines of Christ,” which sounds like it should be ripping black metal, is instead all drones and spoken whispers, while “Shadow of the Curse” seems to take that approach and make it even less friendly in its early going, only to give over to cassette worthy rawness as Python make their way out. It’s as fitting an end as anything one might otherwise come up with, wailing vocals and all, and I suppose when taken together, the 9:44 closer summarizes most of what the album as a whole has to offer in mood and ultra-opaque metallurgy. Still, there’s nothing quite like sitting with the whole thing in all its mesmerizing, confusing anti-glory.

To that end, you can stream the album in full below. Be warned, this is some weird shit. Approach with an open mind and realize that the challenge is part of the appeal.

With caution or without, enjoy:

The Ajna Offensive, in conspiracy with AnnapurnA, sets June 6th as the international release date for Python’s highly anticipated second album, Astrological Warfare.

Python became a breath of existence in late 2008 between two Mediterranean friends with blood-roots south of the Vatican. With mutual appreciation for the catacombs and gallows of ancestry, they set forth to unravel what mysteries and folklore from the motherland. As time progressed, songwriting and words became a steady diet tucked away for when the time was right. A self-fulfilling prophecy constructed songs for the initiated; a medium in the crypt of the cemetery was born, for ghosts of the past and present to eliminate questions and answers of the pretenders. Superstitions and metaphysical manifestation take control and tell the tales of Python.

Imagine digging around in a dusty, moldy basement of some tenement in Italy and discovering an old box of demos with one obliquely marked “1976” and brandishing only song titles such as “Iconoclast,” “Fire Sacrifice,” “Strega,” “Black September,” “Neophyte” and “Echoes of Past Darkness.” You might be led to confuse this with some long-lost Paul Chain demo, but this was, in fact, the sound of Python’s debut album, Serpent Superstition. Now arrives the likewise presciently titled Astrological Warfare, the second full-length from from native New Yorkers with old roots drilling through to Italian soils. Python is not kids playing genre exercises, but rather a decrepit, lusty, distant, and coiling analog occult rock fueled by old legend. Dutifully recommended for fans of old Paul Chain, The Black (Italy), and The Mezmerist.

The Ajna Offensive website

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Annapurna Production website

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