Sentient Ruin is proud to seal an unholy release pact with cryptic US-based black industrial monstrosity Somnolent, as we ready the duo’s new album release on LP/CS/digital formats worldwide this December with iconic European dark industrial dealers Cyclic Law handling the CD release also worldwide.
Anticipating the monstrous release, industrial/experimental blog Brutal Resonance has premiered the track “II” assessing that the release is “a texture-oriented escape into an otherworldly presence fueled by ritualistic tendencies and a horror-based mythology and fantasy“ - you can checkout the feature HERE.
Somnolent rises from the abyss with its new album "The Infernal Expanse", an immense aural beast of infernal and diabolical black/death industrial dark ambient chaos fuming from the monstrous jaws of total hell and oblivion. The band comprises of founding solo multi-instrumentalist Jessi Nihl (Noctis, ex-Lycus, ex-Necrite, among others) on guitars, synths and electronics, joined on this release by vocalist MA (Abstracter, Atrament, Ash Prison), and the work sees the duo revel into unseen deconstructions of reality, fusing dark ambient, ritual industrial, noise and cancerous black/death metal debris to unearth the quintessence of infernal sonic abandon. "The Infernal Expanse" both complements and diverges from Somnolent's lengthy mostly digital-only and purely electronic dark ambient and harsh noise discography, and sees the project expand its instrumental arsenal and apocalyptic yield to catastrophic effects.
Adding percussions, strings, violins, and a churning cauldron of crushing metal guitar abstractions to the preexisting electronic dark ambient substrate, with "The Infernal Expanse" Somnolent deliberately embrace certain malevolent and diseased strains of extreme metal, morphing into an otherworldly sonic cataclysm of hellish atmospherics, suffocating hallucinatory soundscaping, and flesh-scaring ritual black industrial madness. Its tectonic soundscapes and earth-shaking atmospheric dirges evoke aeons of absolute chthonian tyranny and bury the listener in an infernal aphotic realm of complete darkness, while molten flows of magmatic dissonance, twisted abstract black/death metal deformities gnarled out of shape and bestial demonic vocals conjure an inhuman sonic ceremonial of sprawling nightmares and absolutely blood-freezing horror. Influenced by entities like Lustmord, Nordvargr, MZ.412, Portal, Blut Aus Nord, Tyranny, Teitanblood, Sunn O))), and Impetuous Ritual, with the "The Infernal Expanse" Somnolent have harnessed a realm of infernal aural majesty that will inflict deep and horrific wounds into the mind of those who set ears upon their inverted conjurations, and which will leave long lasting scars in the fabric of elite underground experimental ambient black/death metal and industrial.
To officially see the light on December 3 2021, the release sees two rising forces in the unholy propagation of modern deviant aural darkness - Cyclic Law and Sentient Ruin - unite once again to bring fans of ritual sonic hellscapes one of the most baffling and nightmarish emanations the genre will see all year, with Cyclic Law handling the CD/digital and Sentient Ruin handling the vinyl/tape/digital editions worldwide.
Transformative dark atmospheric extreme ambient project Somnolent was created by American multi-instrumentalist and sound designer Jessi Nihil (Noctis, ex-Lycus, ex-Necrite and countless other projects) as a development of the artist's long running fascination with occultism and the work of legendary dark ambient godfather Lustmord. Initially called Cerberus and based in the UK, this early incarnation of the project was guitar-based dark ambient, and its original recorded output first surfaced as far back as 2006 with the album "The Forgotten", released by Dark Forest Productions (USA) as a pro CD-R. Nihil changed the project's name to Somnolent in 2010 in correspondence with an increased exploration of more electronic territories. This new incarnation materialized with a first digital release called "Manifestations MMXIII" published in 2013 and then followed by seventeen other digital releases between 2013 and 2021 exploring dark ambient, harsh noise, hellish industrial and everything in between. During this time Somnolent also materialized as a live solo act between 2013 to 2018, eventually bringing in several different live session members. This new outreach expanded the project's scope further and lead to the incorporation of more instruments and dynamics being added to the mix, a development which resulted in the conceivement and subsequent recording of most of "The Infernal Expanse" during 2019. While still firmly rooted in dark ambient and ritual industrial, "The Infernal Expanse" introduced a strong affinity to fringe strains of abstract, atmospheric and experimental black and death metal (another long running influence of Nihil) due to its prominent use of drums and percussions, strings, aggressive metal guitars and a malevolence and intensity akin to that of hideous extreme metal entities like Teitanblood or Portal. These instrumental recordings casually came across Abstracter vocalist MA (also in Ash Prison and Atrament) who intrigued by the composition's scope and darkness offered his vocals services to the work, bringing it to its final form which would become the towering late 2021 first ever Somnolent physical release via Sentient Ruin and and European dark industrial label Cyclic Law.