We’re proud and honored to announce the imminent release of "Abyssgazer", the immense debut album by Italian atmospheric post-death/doom metal oracle Aphotic, to be released in late March 2023 in collaboration with our European comrades Nuclear Winter Records.
The four piece from northern Italy has set out to create the ultimate extreme metal calirvoyance into the death of our universe, through an audio, visual and conceptual experience of unparalleled evocative power. "Abyssgazer" represents a concept of ultimate finality doused in cosmological inevitability. A sound of world-building/destroying immensity shrouded in otherworldly dissonance and suffocating atmospherics. Visions of eons ahead, evoking the ultimate fate of matter and as such of existence.
Metal Injection has helped us announce the album with an exclusive premiere of the song “Cosmivore”, explaining that “Aphotic is here to devour everything within the cosmos thanks to their new single "Cosmivore." The single is from Aphotic's upcoming record Abyssgazer, which is probably named that due to the nothingness that'll ensue after the consumption of the universe.“ - you can read the full feature and check out the track HERE.
According to the eschatological tale and astrophysical prediction, the most absolute Omega possibly conceivable will materialize as aeons ahead, on timescales almost impossible to imagine, an inexorably inflating universe made only of exhausted and degenerate stellar remnants will reap apart the fabric of spacetime itself until matter will start decaying, and even every black hole singularity will be evaporated, due to quantum effects, into radiation emanating in nothingness. And so, as maximum entropy will be reached, time will become meaningless. In this frame, the album title-track reflects on how, in remote times and places, inert matter can shape into living beings, then evolve into sentient creatures who might become able to stare into the unknown and wonder about the true nature of time and space – by gazing into the abyss. The Abyssgazers, will become the self-consciousness of the Universe. Then come the medium: dark, imposing, colossal atmospheric death metal to disintegrate the fabric of perception, reality, and time itself, and to soundtrack the universe's last vision and final breath. A nebulous, churning cosmic abyss evoking the destruction of worlds through masterful sonic synthesis: the necromancing twisted dark death metal of Incantation and Immolation, the expansive and morphing storytelling of Triptykon, Neurosis, Evoken and Bolzer, and the suffocating coldness and dissonance of Godflesh. And finally, the visuals by Chilean abstract painter Rodrigo Pereira: an otherworldly vision unto the abyss sealing this eschatological journey towards the eons to come. Analog mixing meticulously crafted under the expertize of audio engineer Greg Chandler from Esoteric (Priory Recording Studios, UK) and mastering by Colin Marston from Gorguts etc. (The Thousand Caves Studio, NYC), complete an unheralded debut album of immense, imaginative, consciousness-expanding avant-garde death metal crafted to glorify and reimagine the immensity and inevitability of death far beyond this carnal plain.
Aphotic formed in 2020 in northern Italy from current and former members of bands like Fuoco Fatuo, Blasphemer, and Ekpyrosis with the intent of constructing world-building, deeply atmospheric death metal soundtracking a philosophical and eschatological concept revolving around the expansion and ultimate fate, and death, of our universe. The band's influences coming from death, black, doom and post-metal have enabled them to exalt this post-human concept and weave a multitude of moods and styles into a vast and abysmal canvas shrouded in dissonance and suffocating atmospherics.
The result of this vision is "Abyssgazer", planned as a joint March 24 2023 release on LP, CD and MC formats between Sentient Ruin (US) and Nuclear Winter Records for Europe.