There’s nothing much cryptic about the band’s name or the title of their debut album: you know exactly what you’re going to get.
But, just so there’s absolutely no doubt, here’s the band’s biography: ‘Black Earth was formed at the end of MMXII, a process initiated by a congregation of entities under a Saturnian ritual of Death, from the unconscious to the enlightenment. Begotten in chaos and speaking an abject language that hides the secrets of the great truth beyond the lies of the material world. Beyond the present, beyond the past. Feasting the survival of the old knowledge beyond history and the putrid path of mankind. Riding the tiger along Kali Yuga.’
To declaim the band or this concept album pretentious would be to be missing the point: it’s all about high theatre, and the fact they’ve been listed as a ‘recommended’ act by none other than Stephen O’ Malley speaks volumes.
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And yes, volume is a key factor here: ‘A Cryptic Howl’ is an album on which the groundshaking volume it was recorded at is tangible. The bass is a dank, grinding boom from the bowels of the earth, while the guitars melt into a crushing mass of sound. The instruments meld into a single wall of sound, the strangled vocals all but buried beneath the tempest. It’s not only heavy, but scarily so: truly, the sound of the underground.
Black Earth Online
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