KERASFORA "Six Nights Beyond The Serpent's Threshold" [CD, Digipak]
2024 - Atmospheric Black Metal from Chile
Detailed Description
In the summer of 2021, KERASFORA quietly released their debut EP, Denn die Todten reiten schnell, on CD and cassette in their native Chile. An obsidian gem like few others in the nowadays black metal scene, its mesmerizing mysticism sounded utterly ancient, but it didn't nod too conspicuously nor too often to any '90s touchstones. For that reason - and many others, so copious were its charms - IRON BONEHEAD released it worldwide on vinyl in early 2022. However, for awe-inspiring as that record often was, KERASFORA's debut album is set to eclipse that and everything else within the wider black metal scene. Titled Six Nights Beyond the Serpents Threshold, indeed does the album comprise six immersive, none-more-mesmerizing songs, each one once again evoking forgotten realms and vast vistas of wonder. And yet, here does the one-man KERASFORA strike upon bolder or at least more rarefied territory with his inscrutable usage of synths: whereas so many black metal bands, past and present, use synths as a blanket of atmosphere - often unobtrusively, for fear of "un-true" accusations - the selfsame mainman puts them front and center across these Six Nights, carrying each song's main melody with an almost-demonic lullaby style. It's difficult, then, to compare that synth usage / prominence to KERASFORA's contemporaries; one would likely have to dig deep into the realm of old psychedelia and krautrock in the '70s or the first caustic rumblings of post-punk at the dawn of the '80s to locate a proper analog(ue). Which is all to say that, somehow, Six Nights Beyond the Serpents Threshold manages to be more BLACK METAL than all and sundry: menacing and majestic, wonderfully weird and wildly singular. That KERASFORA's guitar tone is even thicker and his gait grimmer and more lumbering here simply make the album an even grander achievement. KERASFORA's first EP might've evoked the likes of Grimorium Verum, Vobiscum Inferni, and early Hetroertzen as far as displaying a different face for South American black metal brewed in the cauldrons of olde, but with Six Nights Beyond the Serpents Threshold, it's not unjust to say that the man created a modern classic of spaced-out rawness.
