WITHERER: Blackened Death/Doom Artisans To Unleash Debut Full-Length, Shadow Without A Horizon, June 20th On Hypaethral Records!

Blackened death/doom artisans WITHERER will release their debut full-length Shadow Without A Horizon on June 20th via Hypaethral Records.

The suffocating darkness of archaic, lithic walls… The oneiric, labyrinthine descent into timeless caverns… Ancient waters carve deeper and deeper, leading the wailing spectres down, towards the void, all-consuming darkness above and beneath, opaque, silent… WITHERER’s Shadow Without A Horizon ruthlessly plummets into the furthest subterranean corners of blackened death/doom metal. These five evocations seal the listener within the earth’s bloodless veins, as writhing black/death passages convulse alongside ritualistic funeral doom, spiraling downwards, onwards, until finally all that is left is the endless abyss of the cosmos, indistinguishable from the pitch blackness of the earth’s deepest vaults.

Weaving together black/death intensity and vast funeral doom ritualism, WITHERER crafts soundscapes both punishing and dreamlike, claustrophobic and immense, ruthless and meditative. Veterans of both metal genres, these pseudonymous musicians shed the skin of previous identities to completely submerge themselves within this project’s depressive gloom. Following an unreleased demo and the 2019 single “Milk Sea (Bathing In Its Waves),” WITHERER entered a multi-year phase of songwriting for its first full-length album, Shadow Without A Horizon. This produced a greater compositional focus on doom metal, leading to a reformulation of the band’s earlier atmospheric black metal sound into the blackened death/doom monstrosity it has emerged as today. The band also transformed from a one-man project into a three piece, as founding musician and lead songwriter/lyricist Tiamoath was joined by guitarist Øhrracle and drummer Hex Visceræ.

Shadow Without A Horizon slices through genre conventions and plummets into the furthest subterranean corners of the earth’s bloodless veins. Different confrontations with mortality amongst all three members during the writing and recording process of the record created an alchemical intensity to the performances. “I had already described the album as an hour-long memento mori,” Tiamoath explains. “The fact that health issues and brushes with death occurred during the process of creating this release was certainly difficult, but it was conducive to the theme of Shadow Without A Horizon. I think it’s a recording that will stick with us all because of that and was profoundly cathartic as a result.”

On Shadow Without A Horizon, the vile depths and dragging slowness of funeral doom are punctuated by throttling chaos; churning violence gives way to airy, spectral passages, and mournful ambience is sliced through with feverish convulsions in a truly distinctive approach to blackened death/doom.

In advance of the record’s release today WITHERER unveils first single “Solar Collapse Mandala.” The band comments, “‘Solar Collapse Mandala’ is an uncompromising purgation, a funeral pyre whose flames writhe above and beneath dying stars. It holds in mesmerizing tension doom-laden opaque atmospheres and crushing black/death intensity. Eerie, phantom-like vocalizations erupt from this ceremonial ichor into igneous violence, the composition burning itself to ashes as its meditative churning builds gravitational momentum towards a punishing and ruthless conclusion.”