Calling the split “amicable but lamentable to say the least,” Averse Sefira have sadly called it a day.
The long-running Austin black metallers are survived by a stellar discography — see Advent Parallax or Tetragrammatical Astygmata for the incontrovertible evidence — as well as a very entertaining, sporadically updated blog that explored the band’s occult adventures. Here, for example, is an excerpt from the February 3, 2011 post “Never Speak the Names”:
Just minutes ago, I said the word “Shemhamphorash” aloud in the darkness of my room. I don’t know what compelled me. In that moment, the wheel of my consciousness was temporarily grasped by an “other” who looked through my eyes, flexed the fingers of my left hand like it was a new glove, and intoned, “I must affect a voice,” through my mouth. It took intense concentration to bid him away long enough for me to quickly perform a banishing ritual. No way would I go to sleep without being sure.
In a farewell post that begins with a quote from the suicide note of Robert E. Howard (!) bassist/vocalist Wrath notes that the break-up comes almost exactly sixteen years after he and vocalist/guitarist Sanguine “began mapping our musical destiny over a table cut from the heart of an ancient tree”; a destiny which eventually manifested itself in a band “formed by will, thrall to no sovereign.”
“[S]o shall it ever be,” Wrath writes. “[Averse Sefira] continues to fly on tattered wings, though it is now part of the ages and leaves me, Sanguine Mapsama, and The Carcass behind. We were but its humble vessels in the end. The names are writ, the stars are gone.”
It is an appropriately epic epitaph. In other words…Condemned to Glory!
Video of Averse Sefira hating on Jesus and the “decaying meat sacks that [are] humanity” along with a couple more tracks after the jump.
Visit the various grave sites: Facebook, Candlelight, Bandcamp, and the band’s funny single tweet Twitter feed.
