NAGA Premiere “Thanatou” from Void Cult Rising; Album out Nov. 15
Business is getting nastier in Napoli. Since Italy’s NAGA released their self-titled debut EP in 2013, their trajectory has consistently been a downward spiral — atmospherically speaking, not in terms of the quality of their output — into an inflicted and charred morass of grim post-sludge. As was manifest on 2014’s HEN (review here) and its 2016 Lay Bare Recordings-issued follow-up, Inanimate, the trio have only grown darker as they’ve moved forward into this realm of intended extremity, and their latest manifestation, the six-song/44-minute Spikerot release, Void Cult Rising, takes cues from spacious black metal on opener “Only a God Can’t Save Us” and uses them as a foundation from which to conjure post-metallic ambience in pieces like “Melete” and “Thanatou” — the latter serving as their “Stones from the Sky”-moment; can’t be post-metal without one — while keeping the bite in the screaming vocals of guitarist Lorenzo De Stefano. Through a lumbering churner like “Bedim the Sun” and higher-register-tension-into-utter-noise-wash of the penultimate “Pyre,” NAGA demonstrate the willfulness of their creativity and the purpose of their aesthetic evolution, the progressive mindset that’s brought them to the near-lightless place they now reside.
Void Cult Rising is the kind of album that reviewers plaster with hyperbolic warnings about not being “for the faint of heart,” and while I’ll spare you that — adding as I do that I hope this post finds you in good health generally; thanks for reading — it’s nonetheless true that anything so extreme is going to be all the more select in who can approach it on its own merits. If you can’t get down with vocal scathe, you might not find your place in NAGA‘s void cult — which, given the progression of the 14-minute
title-track that closes, seems all the more like their very own incarnation of Amenra‘s “church of Ra” — and that seems just fine by the band. Clearly their exploration is about more than locking in maximum audience appreciation or they’d be a pop band. As it stands, Void Cult Rising is the most outwardly heavy and the most intentionally brutal thing they’ve done, as De Stefano, bassist Emanuele and drummer Dario — all three of whom have been on board since the debut EP — find sense in what to so many no doubt sounds like pure chaos. It isn’t, in fact, chaotic. It’s thought out, rife with expressive drive and uncompromising force.
As they move through the last march and noise-soaked abrasion of the title-track, with the song finally tearing itself apart past 11 minutes in en route to a long fadeout of static and feedback and other residual sounds, NAGA come across like they’re letting go into the void in question, but even giving that impression is a purposeful drive on the part of the band. Void Cult Rising is full of these kinds of realizations, and whichever end to which a given song might tip the balance of their aesthetic between post-metal, black metal, doom or sludge, the fact remains that all of it feeds into the central identity that becomes NAGA‘s own by the time they’re done. A third album, traditionally, is where a band finds the path that they’ll continue to talk as they go forward (those that do), and NAGA could certainly do a lot worse in terms of direction, but they don’t at all seem like they’re finished pushing themselves into new territory either, and that’s just as much a part of who they are as any individual riff, scream or crash presented here. They may be cohesive and sure of what they’re doing, but they by no means come across as settled or ready to settle. No. They’ll try to outdo this, and given the places Void Cult Rising seems willing to go, they just might do it.
You can watch/listen to the premiere of “Thanatou” below, followed by a quote from De Stefano about the song and more PR wire background, including the preorder link for Void Cult Rising, which is out Nov. 15 on Spikerot Records.
Enjoy:
NAGA, “Thanatou” official track premiere
Singer/guitarist Lorenzo De Stefano on “Thanatou”:
“‘Thanatou’ is part of the climax of Void Cult Rising and represents together with ‘Melete’ one of its most intense passages. In general the album is a meditation on death (melete thanatou for the ancient Greeks) given by a series of events in our lives that have left a mark in this regard and therefore inspired most of my lyrics. ‘Thanatou’ wants to depict a soliloquy of a dying man forced to be silent, he can hear his beloved ones around him but can’t express what he feels because of a sensory dulling, and he let himself go in a consideration on the human finitude, on his own life, in the inability to rely on any transcendence whatsoever. Toward the end there’s a quote from a Eugenio Montale verse that I’ve always loved: ‘Yet it remains that something has happened, perhaps nothing that is everything,’ which summarize in just a few words what I think remains of our lives from an atheistic point of view: the memory, nothing compared to eternity and yet for us all that matters.”
Italian Blackened Doom monster NAGA is ready to make their comeback in November with a new obscure effort called ‘Void Cult Rising’ following up the fortunate ‘Hen’ and ‘Inanimate’. Deeply grounded in the sulphurean atmosphere of their land, their aim is to deliver the biggest amount of distortion, heaviness and nihilism to your ears. No concept, no bullshits, no happiness, just sound anger and frustration to exorcise and reflect the greyness and despair of contemporary world.
Using the words of frontman Lorenzo De Stefano”Void Cult Rising is a meditation on death from a personal perspective, like for example losing someone dear, but also a global one like the end of all things”.
The Naples-based three-piece pick up where they left off, shaping a masterpiece of grief and nihilism.
Void Cult Rising will be coming out November 15th via Spikerot Records and is now available for pre-order RIGHT HERE
NAGA is:
Lorenzo – (Vocals and guitar)
Emanuele – (Bass)
Dario – (Drums)
haha that’s kinda typical italian rehearsal garage place ;)