It’s been a few years since Philadelphia-based post-metal outfit Cathari have released new music but they’re back this year with a reworked lineup and new album, In God’s Infinite Silence. The follow up to 2019’s Corporeality, In God’s Infinite Silence is a murky, brooding album that exists in the space between sludge, black and post-metal, wielding emotional heaviness like an additional instrument.
Due for release on May 1, Decibel is streaming the album’s first singe, “Beautiful Boy,” today. Cathari just drop you straight into the action—”Beautiful Boy” is the fifth of six tracks on the album and it takes approximately one minute for the band to hit an emotional peak, the guitars transmitting a sense of high-pitched urgency underneath vocalist Mag Stephen’s miserable-shrieks-and-moans-through-clenched-teeth delivery.
“In God’s Infinite Silence is about collapse, be it mental, physical or societal,” Stephens tells Decibel. “All around me in the years I wrote this, things fell apart in my life and around the world, both locally and globally. I wanted to create a piece that felt like the ebbs and flows of ongoing mental collapse, capturing the rage and indignity, the suffering and fear, and by the end, sheer panic and paranoia.
“To accomplish this, we abandoned our last album’s approach of post-rock sparseness and contrast and instead primarily built our sound on the relentlessness and claustrophobia of sludge, hardcore, noise and black metal. This album is meant to be simultaneously catchy and harrowing, beautiful and nightmarish. For there is beauty in watching everything tumble down, even though the experience leaves us exasperated, gasping for breath, basking In God’s Infinite Silence.”
Cathari will release In God’s Infinite Silence on May 1. You can follow them on Instagram for news on pre-orders.
