Terminus Episode 51 - Devoured, Inferno, Fyrnask, Secret Fire

2021-05-12

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In this shimmering and vast episode of Terminus, your intrepid hosts venture into a block of advanced, high-concept black metal laced with elements of Orthodox, post-black, post-punk, electronic, ambient, neofolk, and just about anything else you can think of- after some oldschool death metal, if you're into that sort of thing. Long-running Indonesian battalion Devoured opens the festivities with The Curse of Sabda Palon, their first record in 9 years. Originally starting as a pummeling brutal death...

Long-running Indonesian battalion Devoured opens the festivities with The Curse of Sabda Palon, their first record in 9 years. Originally starting as a pummeling brutal death project, the band has since shifted gears into a unit which combines the dramatic, fluid melody of Dismember with delicate underpinnings of Southeast Asian folk music. We take some time investigating the role of vocals and drums in this style, as well as linking it to recent oldschool revival weirdos like Incertus- highly recommended for those who want something more from "retro-death."

It's all uphill and downhill and sideways and inside out from here as we begin our block of abstract black metal with Inferno, underrated stalwarts of the Czech scene returning with a record sure to make waves in the Orthodox scene. Inferno combines high-level black metal guitar technique with a dizzying array of textures and instrumental voices to create something expansive and alien yet oddly mystical and comforting. Black metal psytrance? A natural progression of Aosoth? We cover these possibilities and more.

After a brief return to forgotten pre-post-metal with Minsk, we're back in the fray with Fyrnask, a German project which laces a core of vicious and abstract black metal with slabs of dark ambient, neofolk, and post-industrial music, all of which contribute to a lonely, hermetic whole. Your hosts go back and forth on the relation of parts to the whole- Fyrnask is a band who are capable of doing excellent, straight-up ripping black metal, but would that be worth sacrificing the breadth of their arrangements? You be the judge.

Finally, we conclude with something a little more traditionally Terminus with Secret Fire, a Canadian project which creates black metal more immediate and traditional than the previous two artists, but no less winding and abstract. TDMG and TBMG immediately become broiled in debate- is this Graveland? Winterfylleth? House of First Light? Something we've never heard of?- but ultimately conclude, unsurprisingly, that it's great music, no matter the results of the Rorschach test.

00:00 - Introductory bullshitting / Terminus News ft. Collapsor

0:11:20 - Devoured - The Curse of Sabda Palon (Sadist Records)

0:48:15 - Inferno - Paradeigma: Phosphenes of Aphotic Eternity (Debemur Morti)

1:34:31 - Interlude - Minsk - Waging War on the Forevers fr. Out of a Center Which is Neither Dead Nor Alive (At A Loss Recordings, 2005)

1:45:12 - Fyrnask - VII: Kenoma (Van Records)

2:31:17 - Secret Fire - The Old Beast Law (Throne of May)

3:16:54 - Outro - Imperial Trumpet demo - Side A fr. Rehearsal Demo 1 (House of First Light, 2015)

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