‘Existentialismus’ finds ABDUCTION on the apex of their powers, delivering an uncompromising imaginative and prescient of black steel that bridges historical knowledge with fashionable despair. Standing as their most direct and emotionally complicated work so far, this launch sees the band wielding their trademark depth with newfound function, creating an album that’s each spiritually difficult and sonically devastating. Via masterful songcraft and liberated vocal approaches, ABDUCTION proves why they’ve turn out to be one of many UK’s most important excessive steel acts.
Abduction’s fast development from obscure one-man challenge to one of many UK’s most important and distinctive excessive steel bands has been fascinating to behold. With many bands at the moment paying homage to black steel’s glory years, and simply as many are trying to attach unrelated workings to that legacy, Abduction’s music manages to be each recognisably genuine and imbued with its personal spirit. And by no means has this been more true than within the new album, Existentialismus.
After an extremely prolific recording run that noticed a trilogy of albums launched from 2017 to 2019, 2022’s explosive Black Blood, the band’s first album for the revered label Candlelight Data, proved an simple milestone for the band. A fiercely expansive work, it noticed Abduction marching confidently into new territories, mixing uncooked black steel with progressive and psychedelic songwriting and slower, post-metal-esque textures, elevating the group’s profile significantly.
On the face of it, Existentialismus is definitely a return to extra stripped-down mechanics, and but it’s arguably the band’s most electrifying, emotionally complicated and private recording so far. The searing and virtually unrelenting aural violence stay, this being as heavy and exhilarating a set of songs as ever, however immersive songs similar to ‘Fact is as Sharp a Sword as Vengeance’ and the ‘Razors of Occam’ are soaked in new stage of emotion and private funding.
“The obvious growth is within the voice,” considers vocalist and founder A|V. “I felt that vocally, I had extra freedom to precise the lyrics and messages with fewer style leashes. Given the themes of ache, frustration, and concern concerned, it made sense to convey that in its most pure state fairly than performing to sure expectations. The vocals and lyrics are vital to me, so I allow them to breathe and counterpoint the bands enjoying.”
“There’s a hazard of a personality changing into a parody of itself fairly often in artwork and music,” the frontman expands. “I’ve all the time tried to evolve myself and the presentation of Abduction to carefully align these inventive concepts with an ever-changing, ever-learning idea. This contains lyrics and the efficiency of the voice and the devices. Musically, I wished one thing extra direct and with much less ‘house’ consistent with the frustration of the songs and the motivation to motion. In earlier works, I’ve overstated my very own compulsion to develop and attain a sure level of spirituality past that of merely being. I felt that we’re able to some type of epoch-defining alteration of consciousness. Nevertheless, it has turn out to be clearer just lately that that is most likely only a pipe dream which we are going to by no means attain. In actual fact, it appears that evidently the one potential defining character arc for the human race might merely be mutually assured destruction. Tragic and but anticipated. How do I reconcile this actuality with my duties of household? I don’t. It’s a fixed pendulum that swings between getting ready the very best I can for a future I hope doesn’t come and ignoring it utterly, surrounding myself with nature and staying away from town as a lot as doable. The knowledge is understanding that you simply, in actual fact, no nothing in any respect.”
Having turn out to be one of many UK’s most seen black steel acts on the stay circuit, bringing their ritualistic and immersive performances to audiences at membership exhibits and festivals as Damnation, Bloodstock, Incineration, Fortress, Doomsday, Mass Destruction, Samhain, Reaperfest and Eradication, Existentialismus has been recorded, for the primary time, as a full band. That sense of scale is palpable and displays the ambition and embittered grandeur of the brand new materials, an impressively cohesive mixture of otherworldly atmospheres, fiery aggression and apocalyptic stress.
“It’s impressed by the juxtaposition of this horrible post-truth period with its contradictions and the straightforward, metaphorical truths that started in historical religions of the crumbling previous. Someplace between a biblical gospel and a Nietzschean nightmare. As a father, there’s a specific terror in seeing all that our grandfathers constructed, bodily and morally, being torn aside and lowered to a commodity and questioning what sort of world my son will inherit.”
“I’m in no way a thinker – I desperately lack the persistence,” A|V admits. “However my observations of the trendy Western humane race have turn out to be significantly bleak, and this informs my lyrical writing course of. Artwork as a response to life and expertise. That is specified by the primary monitor, ‘A Legacy of Sores’, which posits that the majority of us right here, within the present yr, have turn out to be an alarming pairing of being each too delicate and but with none core beliefs to face on. (‘Moist pores and skin now paper skinny, reveals a core of mud’) I believe this can be a combination of a post-religious society and the acceleration of know-how to the purpose at which its claws are deeply in us. Have you ever tried to stay with no smartphone just lately?”
“I imagine firmly within the knowledge that nothing good comes straightforward and that we should endure a sure stage of strain or be required to point out restraint to achieve something value having. That is echoed in lots of historical cultures and religions worldwide and throughout aeons. The extra you realize, the much less you realize. I see little proof of this within the fashionable world of entitlement and prompt dopamine-charged reactionary ideas and self-gratification processes. We appear to be throwing away all of our gratitude, all of our primary humanity rather than digital itch-scratching continuously. Is it any surprise there’s a psychological well being epidemic or skyrocketing suicide figures? Having moved just lately again to the countryside of my childhood, I’m continuously reminded of the stoicism and everlasting persistence of my elder household: the era of the Industrial Revolution, who constructed partitions, mills, tilled fields, and fetched water, principally with their naked fingers and with out electrical energy. The generations of conflict and the fixed threats to their meagre existence.”
