Track Premiere: Valdrin – “Basilisk of Light”

Only a few months shy of two years ago we debuted a Valdrin single from their last album Two Carrion Talismans. We warned you then that Valdrin were ready to ascend to the next level and with the arrival of Effigy of Nightmares, their third album, out June 12 on Blood Harvest, that prophecy will be appeased undeniably. On Effigy of Nightmares, the Cincinnati-based black metal quartet reign over that next, and outer level with fiery devices many.  

Effigy of Nightmares, like our previous album Two Carrion Talismans, centers around the antagonist of our Mythos: Nex Animus,” writes the band. “The story chronicles the tour of a nameless narrator through the halls of Hospitium Mortis, the nightmare hospital below the Orcus underworld itself, where Nex tortures and lobotomizes the dissident gods of his domain.”

Hence the jawdropper courtesy of Lucas Ruggieri, whose detail will make eyes bleed and brain burn. And curious newcomers will find plenty of highly detailed, dark and deeply evil music waiting for them beneath the cover as well.  

Regarding today’s premiere of “Basilisk of Light,” according to Carter Hicks, Valdrin’s vocalist, guitarist and keyboardist: “This song follows the narrator’s tour through the halls of Hospitium Mortis, into the cell where the god of lies, Wyrmuul, is being tortured. As one of the oldest gods in the Orcus netherworld, Wyrmuul is known as the serpent willow, but here in the nightmare hospital his treelike form and serpentine limbs are shackled to the floors of the cell, awaiting Nex’s final spell of lobotomy… The narrator pleads with this dying god to reveal his wisdom and his knowledge of the hospital’s evil curator, Nex Animus. As Wyrmuul provides this revelation, it becomes apparent that this god of lies, is in fact an Illuminator of truth. A riddle inside an enigma, of which mankind has dubbed ‘Lucifer.’”

“Basilisk of Light”

Preorder Effigy of Nightmares from Blood Harvest now.