On the heels of the band issuing a debut album on Profound Lore Records earlier this year, Sentient Ruin and Australian extreme metal tormentors Consummation seal an unholy blood pact to re-release their first two debut EPs through an exhaustive and extremely curated vinyl release. A decade-spanning retrospective, The Fires of Calcination is a limited edition 12" LP compilation containing every track ever released by the band (taken from their 2012 debut demo tape and from the "Ritual Severance" CD EP released in 2017 by Invictus Productions) leading up to their 2019 Profound Lore debut album - The Great Solar Hunter - all of which also see their first ever release on the vinyl format. The four tracks present on the comp testify with harrowing vehemence the birth and evolution of one of the most defiant and predatory black metal entities to ever tread Australian soil, and documents the band's feral quest for complete aural domination/annihilation over the span of a decade, as they meticulously and malignantly forged their black metal craft to become a mortal weapon of unyielding violence and negativity.
Begotten of a dark flame and malefic premonitions, Consummation spawned from the Brisbane extreme metal scene like a chaos-wielding plague, swollen with torment and pestilence, its primal driving force the darkness of one's own nature which always seeks triumph, and the re-imagination of ancient forces in the heavy metal craft as the tool chosen to achieve this wicked design. The project began of the will of guitarist/vocalist Craig Young back in 2009 while he was still a member of Australian black/death abomination Impetuous Ritual. Joel Rademaker then joined Craig to handle guitar and bass duties and round out the project as a two-piece right before their debut self titled demo was released in 2009. The debut self-titled two song demo tape first showcased Consummation's horrific alloy of tumefying and otherworldly black metal, as it rose from the dark flame which had spawned it with the vigor and maleficence of a portent spewn from the most torment-ridden circles of hell. The demo-tape's monstrous aura quickly transcended its geographical boundaries and soon made its way out of Australian confines, being picked up for a digital release in 2015 by Irish extreme metal forge Invictus Productions. Around this time David Haley from Psycroptic joined the band on drums rounding out the lineup to a power trio, and this new lineup sealed a blood pact to record the band's sophomore offering, the Ritual Severance EP, which was also released on CD by Invictus in 2017 and which displayed yet another step for the band deeper into an ungodly realm of wretched and calamitous aural pandemonium of indiscernible destructiveness. This release marked Consummation's sound and vision coming into full circle, as the various influences of the band were metabolized and broken down into their core elements and recombined anew to yield something monstrous and imposing: classical and ambient experimentations, set against the vehemence and timeless magnificence of the genre's forebearers, preserved in their primordial glory but injected with new blood from the infamously wretched late 90s and 00s French black metal scene flowing blacker than ever and pulsating with the force of a cataclysm spewn from a godless dimension. Thematic and conceptual influences coming from Frederick Nietzsche, Charles Baudelaire, William Blake, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, Thomas Karlsson and mythological texts like The Poetic Edda, Bhagavad Gita and various biblical passages were twisted like knives into the flanks of the new beast to further foment its aggression, deviance, and unwillingness to bow to anything or anyone, as ascension through violence, power through suffering, achieving individual completion through integrating the dark side of one’s nature, and death, became driving forces behind the new entity's abominable intents.
This ingestion of visions, themes and musical influences elaborated over the span of a near-decade set the path ablaze for Consummation, as with unseen vigor and unyielding intransigence they set about coercing all their influences and inspirations into a one hour long full-length album of calamitous black metal depredation (the monstrous The Great Solar Hunter released in mid 2019 by Profound Lore Records). Around the same time Sentient Ruin stepped forth to close the circle and create a compendium and retrospective of this sinister path which over a decade was paved by the band to achieve their ultimate and most malefic design. The songs from the 2012 debut demo and the Ritual Severance EP were unearthed from the rubble of their own ruinous existence, remastered, and repackaged with brand new artwork by Adrian Baxter to see their existence for the first time ever on vinyl, coexisting to seal into wax and preserve in a timeless format the historic beginnings of one of Australia's most defiant and intransigent black metal acts of our times.
While the planned ship date of the vinyl is set to August 30 2019, the release can be streamed in full and pre-ordered through our store and Bandcamp page.