Californian blackened death metal act ULTHAR to release a brand new album in May

California’s ULTHAR conjure twisted otherworldly visions and mold them in the aural furnace of blackened death, creating something uniquely arcane and eerie in the hallowed voids of the underground. The trio — Shelby Lermo (Vastum, Extremity), Justin Ennis (Void Omnia, Vale), and Steve Peacock (Spirit Possession, Pandiscordian Necrogenesis, Pale Chalice) — comes together to unleash a feral urgency for dizzying, erratic black metal with a death metal band’s bludgeoning violence. Thematically heavy on weird, supernatural horror and a bizarre lyrical surrealism, ULTHAR is a difficult-to-classify spectral entity within the sphere of extreme metal.

The Other Records is now stoked to present Nightgaunts MMXVI, which features the band’s debut material from their 2016 demo along with a newly recorded ambient track. Nightgaunts MMXVI is the protean work of the trio, conjuring trancelike visions which effectively drag the listener across a Kadathian hellscape into abysmal worlds. The six intentionally unnamed tracks are featured here for the first time on both compact disc and vinyl, providing the perfect accompaniment for evening ritual seances whilst waiting on the band’s upcoming third and fourth albums (due out next year on 20 Buck Spin).

According to guitarist/vocalist Lermo, “Nightgaunts MMXVI“ is a brief documentation of ULTHAR’s first five years recording as a band — the first five songs we wrote together (which, in parts, later merged and morphed into other songs on later albums), followed by a lengthy ambient piece we recorded together, in isolation, throughout 2020. Bookends to the beginning of the band, as well as a prelude for bigger things coming in the near future. The first five songs on this album were originally released as a self-produced, unnamed demo tape limited to 100 copies in 2016, and we are very happy to join forces with The Other Records to bring it to a wider audience, with new artwork and across several formats, thesesix years later.”