UK-based black metallers Barshasketh are setting the world on fire in 2019 with their new self-titled full-length, their first for new label, W.T.C. Productions. While spelunking back to the mid-’90s for inspo is the latest hip thing to do in black metal, Barshasketh are taking on their influences with a surprising amount of tact and savvy. What the band are up to on their fourth full-length is obvious to diehard fans of Unanimated, Dissection, and Sacramentum, but there’s more to the Scotland-based black metallers than simple appropriation.
On Barshasketh’s self-titled they weave spells aggressive, melancholic, and thought provoking. Tracks like “Vacillation,” “Resolve,” and “Ruin I” spin spells of malevolence and nighttime evils, whereas tracks like “Consciousness I,” “Consciousness II,” and “Recrudescence” swirl through the darkest recesses of the mind to conjure up feelings of isolation, desperation, and loneliness.
Says Barshasketh mainman Krigeist: “After we completed Ophidian Henosis, there was a real desire to get back to some of the fundamentals in terms of the themes that inspire us as a band, and what better way to do this than to tackle the esoteric idea that inspired our band name? For those that are unaware, our band name derives from the Hebrew Be’er Shachat, which roughly translates as ‘Pit of Corruption’; a multifaceted esoteric idea in the Qliphoth concerning the self existing in a cyclical process that goes through phases of destruction, purification and rebirth.”
Bring on Barshasketh! Let Monday fall to ruin against its Scandinavian-inspired malice!
