IMPERIAL CULT
Founded in 2016, Imperial Cult is drone black metal-trance hailing from the Netherlands. Its monstrous sound is constructed on repetitive, cyclical, and vorticose cyclones of furious raw black immersed in a storming haze of decaying ambient-noise that defies logic and sanity. Their 2019 debut LP Spasm of Light - released by Sentient Ruin and Amor Fati in Europe - is a single, thirty minute-plus long trance-inducing movement of (dis)embodied chaos designed to dismantle the psyche. The phantasmal vocals, combined with the repetitive intensity of the music, create an impenetrable fortress casting its spectral shadow unto a scorched and barren wasteland. The three members involved are key figures in the Dutch extreme/experimental underground, active in bands like Turia, Nusquama, Cryptae, Lubbert Das, Horrid Apparition, Dead Neanderthals, Solar Temple, Heavy Natural, Iskandr, Celestial Bodies, and DungeönHammer as well as with the black metal underground label Haeresis Noviomagi. Thematically, Imperial Cult is a reconnaissance of an inherited culture of physical violence and material exploitation. Marching towards self destruction, we must understand the inevitability of violence and quenchless nature of bloodshed. Imperial Cult refers to ancient forms of divine worship of emperors as deities, and the cognate contemporary worship of those who will ultimately destroy us. It is a call to power, to reclaim the sacrificial logic which enables our ruination…