Artist: Empyrean Gaunt
Country: USA
Label: Altare Productions / Poisonous Sorcery
Formats: LP / Cassette Tape
Year: 2025
Although the identity of the only person behind Empyrean Gaunt is kept in darkness, I would be very surprised if this would happen to be a total n00bie in the realms of Raw Black Metal. Not only because of the great quality that is presented on this very first offering, but also because this debut album found its way directly to Altare Productions, arguably the best home for anything that is raw and wicked. The vinyl edition of the album, by the way, is presented by Poisonous Sorcery, a Spanish underground label which you would do well to keep an eye on if your musical tastes lie in this area.
New to the game or not, this nameless guy certainly knows not only his craft, but surely also the masters of the genre. ‘Black Befallen Odium’ is an album, albeit a short one with not even 26 minutes, that pays obvious homage to Hand Of Glory, a rather short-lived one-man project by Simón “Lam” Santana who passed away in 2021. In similar fashion, Empyrean Gaunt weaves a hypnotic tapestry of raw and lo-fi riffs which irrevocably pushes the music into the same unsettling territories as Hand Of Glory as well as Orgy Of Carrion and the early works of Black Cilice. The repetitive nature of the riffs in combination with remarkably contrasting dynamic song writing, makes ‘Black Befallen Odium’ easily one of the better album in this very niche genre of Black Metal.
Just like the musical predecessors that delivered the blueprint for Empyrean Gaunt, this is also a band whose music you need to let sink in properly to properly let it unveil its secrecies. This is the sort of music that the majority of this planet’s inhabitants will never understand and dismiss as mere static noise. Yet, those who dare to really sink in their teeth and try to wrap their ears and heads around it, will be rewarded by some of the most intense and well-written Raw Black Metal of the moment. It also shows that with the bare minimum of resources, it’s still possible to pull off something as stunning as ‘Black Befallen Odium’. There’s really no need for big use of keyboards for a strikingly terrifying atmosphere and no pro-tools production is needed for a sound that hits hard.
