Today, monolithic black metal enigma Black Cilice streams the entirety of its highly anticipated sixth album, Esoteric Atavism, at the No Gleaming Light YouTube channel. Set for international release on July 1st via Iron Bonehead Productions, hear Black Cilice‘s Esoteric Atavism in its entirety exclusively HERE.
By now, Black Cilice require no introduction. Arguably THE most pivotal raw black metal entity of the last decade, this Portuguese enigma has come to both define and defy that idiom. Unmindful of the present, not looking to the future, and undoubtedly rooted in the past, Black Cilice simply IS, and its vast body of work speaks for itself: challenging, for sure, but transportative and transcendental beyond compare.
And so it goes with the band’s sixth full-length, Esoteric Atavism. Ever aptly titled, Esoteric Atavism‘s contents embody that title in a most provocative manner. While Black Cilice is esoteric in the extreme, more so is the entity atavistic, and indeed are those energies the cornerstone of this record. Characteristically coated in miles of miasmic rawness that’s an instrument unto itself, the lyrics of Esoteric Atavism delve into the OLD – old energies, old spiritually – and the music follows suit by reconstituting elements from elder Black Cilice recordings. Always in the red but now deeper into the black, that’s not to say Esoteric Atavism is a deliberate throwback or crass “return to the roots”; rather, the band’s birth pangs are given a deeper wisdom and wider-screened hysteria for the listener to drown himself in…or avoid, revoltingly stratifying as Black Cilice‘s black metal may be. More pointedly, riffs are more forthright, with experimentation subtler, and songs in kind shorter: the proverbial ouroboros, then, forever feeding on the past.
Time is irrelevant to Black Cilice. Past, present, future…all are absorbed into the band’s singular blackout/whiteout swell of sound, and only the NOW exists. Truly, this is Esoteric Atavism.
Fully engage with that atavism exclusively HERE, courtesy of the No Gleaming Light YouTube channel. Cover and tracklisting are as follows:
Tracklisting for Black Cilice’s Esoteric Atavism
1. Beyond the Veil [7:27]
2. Channelling Old Power [5:41]
3. Spiritual Poisoning [5:03]
4. Atavistic Reconnection [4:44]
5. Triumph over Eternity [7:24]
6. Towards Transcendence [5:26]