Long-running visionary French black metal entity BLUT AUS NORD has unveiled the details on the act’s impending new album, Hallucinogen. Now scheduled for October release through Debemur Morti Productions, the record’s cover artwork and other details have been unveiled.
Hallucinogen begins a new era for BLUT AUS NORD, ending the cycle of clandestine industrialized dissonance that culminated with previous transmission Deus Salutis Meæ and moving skyward into freshly melodic territories of progressive clarity. Interweaving dreamlike choirs, inimitable harmonic developments, reflective clean guitars, palpable organic drumming, and a welcome rock and roll swagger, Hallucinogen is a spacious, emotionally wide-ranging record that finds BLUT AUS NORD more open than ever, full of life, and reveling in the element of surprise.
Hallucinogen is yet another coherent universe from a band who have moved away from familiar tropes, aesthetics and comfort zones to unite – with Dionysian spirit – under/overland, surface/void, metropolis/mountain, and the vastness of the mind’s eye into an indispensable addition to their unparalleled body of work.
Metal Hammer posted an early preview of Hallucinogen, commending, “As well as being aptly named, Hallucinogen offers another sonic leap for a band who continue to evolve and expand nearly a quarter century on from their devastating debut album, Ultima Thulée. Still sounding as though your DNA is being spliced with stardust from a distant galaxy, BLUT AUS NORD have shifted their axis from dense, roiling pitch-shifting dynamics to a more refined and open-ended sound, vaster in scope than ever before, devotional in its splendor and fealty to powers beyond time and space, and capable of ensnaring a new generation of intrepid metalheads drawn to the notion of black metal as a spiritual, mind-relocating experience”.
“Hallucinogen marks a new stage in our process of perpetual regeneration”, BLUT AUS NORDarchitect Vindsval offers. “Music is a fascinating quest without end… and it would be a mess to express the same range of emotions, a mess to remain frozen in the same aesthetic, the same energy, a mess to compose and release the same thing again and again… and again”.
BLUT AUS NORD’s Hallucinogen was recorded and mixed at Earthsound Studio, mastered by Bruno Varea at Upload Studio, and completed with incredible, psychedelic cover artwork by Dehn Sora.
Hallucinogen will see release on digitpak CD, 2xLP, cassette, and all digital formats worldwide through Debemur Morti Productions on October 11th. The vinyl edition will be available in four variants; black vinyl, a Debemur Morti exclusive variant, a North American exclusive variant, and a Season Of Mist exclusive variant.
Find preorders at the label’s US webshop HERE, European webshop HERE, and Bandcamp HERE.
Theoricians of Insane Aestheticism
The faceless Entity.
Originating in 1994 from the ashes of VLAD (who released two demos), BLUT AUS NORD are undisputable French Black Metal pioneers, always managing to progress and move forward, evolving in perpetual mutation, developing their own vision of Black Metal.
Choosing, from the start, the total opposite path of regressive bands (who copy what others have done ten years earlier and ten times better), BLUT AUS NORD eschews all the inherent clichés belonging to the genre. BLUT AUS NORD‘s Black Metal approach is a fist in the face of mainstream mediocrity, becoming more macabre and sinister through a blend of innovative musical research, subliminal mental manipulation, and an incredible haunted, nightmarish feeling based on disharmony.
BLUT AUS NORD are creators of a hallucinogenic universe, erasing all preconceived ideas of Black Metal – and extreme music in general. They redefine the rules…