So…it’s difficult to know what precisely awaits when a mysterious album arrives from a self-described “Psychedelic Black Metal Entity from GJ357D Inhabiting Planet Earth since 2017,” but bless whatever advanced alien civilization put this breathtaking work of brilliance, beauty, and heaviness on a rocket to us. We need it now perhaps more than ever.
As far as progressive, reality refracting extreme metal records go, Mytharc, the debut effort from Xenoglyph, exists in a stratosphere all its own.
Below you will find an exclusive full stream of the album — out Friday via Glossolalia Records — as well as a lengthy manifesto on its making and meaning.
⏁⍀⏃⋏⌇⋔⟟⌇⌇⟟⍜⋏ ⍀⟒☊⟒⟟⎐⟒⎅
{…transmission received…}
Suffice it to say Mytharc { ⋔⊬⏁⊑⏃⍀☊ } is a loose social commentary on the overwhelmingly ludicrous nature of what it means to be a living entity in the 21st century on planet earth, and a cautionary tale of the doomed future that humans have surely only begun to endure.
As the age-old battle between dark and light rages on, hypocrisies are easier than ever to observe. Brazen contradictions pervasively infect all avenues of media and politics, and the people who are supposedly “leaders” are only leading humanity in whatever direction puts the most money in their pockets. They say they “care about small businesses” at the same time as they pump billions of dollars into corporate bailouts – while the rest of this nation’s citizens are slated to receive barely enough money to pay the average rent in an American city. They smile for the camera — in an election year, nonetheless — at the same time they silently usher in what some might call the great sixth extinction. The word “government” quite literally means “mind control.” Yet somehow the government has come to be known as an entity that grants freedoms.
Many of the lyrics deal with this paradoxical dichotomy that is becoming more readily apparent with each passing day.
But, behind all of these evils and half-truths, the quintessential and original “puppet master” is surely religion – and not “which religion” but rather, religion itself. If people believe in any sort of deity with absolutely no proof at all, just consider what else they will blindly accept as fact, and all the evil that will continue to stem from such a pompous, juvenile, and entitled agenda. The fact that this magical thinking is still endorsed by anyone is an embarrassment to the human race, and planet earth.
Musicially, we are influenced primarily by the vast, cinematic nature of the “classical” genre. When we come to a crossroads in the writing process, the decision we make will always be the “most musical” one. Whether the resulting sound is evil, sad, mysterious, hopeful, or somewhere in between, the underlying mission is to invoke the broadest possible spectrum of human emotion. Sometimes a few notes of consonance make the dissonant ones that much more ugly and meaningful.
We hope this record will provide a solace from the aforementioned machinations, as we invite autonomous lifeforms in all corners of the globe to revel in the majesty, horror, and musical independence that is Mytharc.
