L'ACÉPHALE · L'Acéphale | DIGIPAK CD

CD in gatefold sleeve with hotfoil stamping and 16-page booklet.

Background information about 'L'Acéphale'

Ten years is a long time to keep a fire smoldering, but "L'Acéphale" arrives like a landslide that has been gathering weight in the dark all along. L'Acéphale, the ever-shifting vessel of Set Sothis Nox La, returns self-titled and utterly ungovernable: seventy-four minutes spread across seven epic-length tracks, recorded over six patient years and finally mixed at Gabriel Espinoza's the Hellhole before Gus Elg worked his mastering magic at Sky Onion in Portland. The result is a record that refuses to sit still — monumental dark folk bleeding into spoken word, black metal fury colliding with almost martial percussion, all of it bound together by historical and literary obsessions that give the whole thing the weight of a forbidden archive.

What makes this album so gripping is the tension. These are monolithic auras, yes, but they spiral and shift constantly; one moment the music is aloof and ceremonial, the next it is savage with wild abandon, and then suddenly delicate in a way that feels genuinely unbreakable. The seven long-form pieces blast with furious whirlwinds and then pull back into cavernous, ritualistic calm, and that push and pull never lets you settle. It is as avant-garde as extreme metal gets while still raging with blistering, cacophonous ferocity — a magnum opus in the truest sense, and a headless cult worth kneeling before. The artwork by Markus Wolff and the layout by John Haughm round off a package that feels like an artifact rather than a mere release.

For fans of: Agalloch, Neurosis, Primordial, Wolves in the Throne Room, Death in June

Track listing

1. Sovereignty: (Dieu – Die Sonne stirbt – Sovereignty)
2. Gloria in Excelsis Mihi
3. Runenberg
4. Hark! The Battle – Cry is Ringing!
5. Last Will
6. Sleep
7. Winternacht

Placer on the market according to GPSR: Four Flames GmbH & Co. KG, In der Garte 38, 49479 Ibbenbueren, Germany, Contact: fourflames.com