Discerning extreme music fans won’t be able to fully immerse themselves into the brilliant madness of Beast of Light — the third ethereal, proggy blackened death metal opus from Philly purveyors of auditory esotericism Surgeon — until the end of August, but Decibel is pleased to have been granted the honor of whetting your appetite a bit this morning with our exclusive premiere of the band’s video for “Forest of Ghosts” directed by Philadelphia artist and owner of Dark Arts Collective Nicole DiPonziano.
“For us the video is a first of its kind for Surgeon,” bassist/vocalist Sean Bolton tells Decibel. “On its own, the song is an interpretation of how art lives and dies or gets blended into our collective culture. The video is able to visually represent that, getting the idea across possibly more clearly and giving the work an added dimension…This is really [DiPonziano’s] interpretation of the song and it was interesting to see her take on it.
“We invested a lot of emotional energy into this record,” Bolton adds. “[Guitarist] Lydia [Giordano] and I took about two years on our own just to lay the basic foundation and then fleshed it out with [drummer] JT [Wieme] and [guitarist] Josh [Mustin]. We recorded it on our own in our home studio and were really able to take the time to lay it down exactly how we wanted it. It’s a bit tough at times to figure out when to step away so we sent the tracks over to Kevin Antreassian at Backroom Studios for mixing and we are pretty psyched at what he was able to bring our sound. Really we are mostly excited about getting the new material out there and playing it for as many people as possible.”
Beast of Light is out August 30th via Anthropic Records.
