ANCIENT BURIAL - Beyond the Watchtowers LP

ANCIENT BURIAL hail from the darkest pits of the Portugal's forever-thriving raw black metal scene. Although a new entity, with no prior public recordings existing, the band mysteriously may (or may not) include members of other high-profile hordes. Nevertheless, what they've created with their debut album stands for serious reckoning. Ominously titled Beyond the Watchtowers, ANCIENT BURIAL's first full-length indeed goes BEYOND: a hysteric, hellish black hole of horrific frequencies, each smothering the senses with hypnotic magick and almost avant-garde crudity.

In one sense, the album slots complementary alongside so much paradigmatic Portuguese black metal, particularly from the Black Circle, instilling a similar sense of possession and otherworldly intent; but in another, more accurate sense, ANCIENT BURIAL bury themselves more deeply into trance states that delicately walk the line between improvisational meltdown and motorik catatonia, carrying over that beyond-obsidian embrace right into the very heart of the listener. Or, more accurately, those who would go Beyond the Watchtowers...