Lesser metal enthusiasts may describe a band they are dismissive of as “no-frills.” I, on the other hand, view this as an asset. A band that is doing their thing, and doing it well, really isn’t going to be concerned with impressing nerds on the internet who have set themselves up as gatekeepers. A good metal band is going to be a good metal band, regardless of who blogs, tweets, or barks about them. Case in point, New Jersey death-doom band Anharat.
I literally wouldn’t have to say anything about this band for their misery incarnate, decay personifying, corpus inverting collapse of Evoken style doom vocals and tar-black Asphyx grooves to validate why disgusting, harsh underground metal exists. But if I did have to say something about it, I’d say that stuff like this exists because some men and women (and some people who aren’t either men or women) need to meet death head on in order to feel alive each day, and listening to an EP like Blood Sorcery is one way of accomplishing this task, without the time or expense of learning to base jump, or signing up to fight with a private mercenary force (more ethical than either option, as well).
As the Vlad the Impaler type corpse-dude performing blood magic on the cover implies, Anharat’s debut EP is a descent into the darker realms of the arcane. “Strigoi Mort” staggers and shudders as it lurches forward, barely able to keep its footing, as if it is about to pass out from massive blood loss, dropping huge plodding riffs like hemorrhaged bushels of blood clots as it teetering with an uncertain momentum, finally finding its resolve in the songs closing minute, and pushing it’s beleaguered hull over the threshold into the following track. “Of Witchcraft and Werewolvery” is next, and feels less like something you listen to, and more like something that happens around, and to you. The track from a liminal void where you have no more agency. The swirling riffs and clashing fills produce the impression that you are surrounded on all sides by shadowy beings, their skeletal forms heaping and tieing bandages around your prone body, as your fluids drained out of you through a valve thrust into your side. It is the sounds and sensation of slowly being mummified. The EP finally concludes with the title track “Blood Sorcery,” which takes up an ominous and unbalanced march amongst the blind darkness of flapping bursts of chord progressions that mimic the feeling of being hounded by a cloud of bats will navigating thorny underbrush in an acidic marsh. The dark grandeur that the final track eventually achieves is inversely matched by who low it brings you while it gets there. A vampiric exchange, achieved through the sorcery of sound.
You can buy and stream Anharat’s Blood Sorcery via Bandcamp below:
Get Blood Sorcery on cassette via Transylvanian Recordings here.
