Anaal Nathrakh Go Apocalyptic on ‘Endarkenment’ Title Track, New Album Announced

Apocalyptic extreme metal battalion Anaal Nathrakh have returned with Endarkenment, their 11th full length album, due Oct. 2 on Metal Blade. Previewing the oncoming devastation, the group has released a music video for the title track, which also serves as the album's opener.

"Endarkenment" is steeped in Anaal Nathrakh's volatile blend of industrialized black metal and grindcore they've so faithfully laid down for nearly two decades now. Sinister, tremolo-picked melodies, inhuman blast beats, and Dave Hunt's maniacal high shrieks intertwined with rapturous clean singing. Rarely do you hear such refined hooks in music as absurdly extreme.

"I think in terms of feel, it's brighter, more open and direct than maybe we've been in the past," Hunt said of Endarkenment. "Obviously I don't mean it's happy-go-lucky sounding, or suggestive of a sunny disposition," he clarified, noting, "I mean something more like it burns with light rather than glowers with darkness. It's coruscating."

Hunt continued, "Personally, I feel more cynical, more bitter, with a greater sense that the world is fucked, and is continually re-fucked by people who have no idea what they are doing. Musically, I think we're more mature - not less frenetic, but better able to channel our energies where they'll be most effective. That's an ongoing process, you never finish growing into what you're doing and being better able to push at the edges of what you can do. But we aren't interested in evolving what we do, only how we do it. We remain unlike the vast majority of other bands in our sound, and we're proud of what we do."

Further outlining the inspiration behind the lyrical themes present on the album, the frontman added, "There has been, and continues to be, increasingly widespread rejection of Enlightenment-style values such as rationalism, skepticism, the rejection of faith in favour of judgements dependent on empirically verifiable phenomena and so on. There are local versions in many places, but in our native UK, this was summed up by politician/sinister gnome Michael Gove's famous claim that we've 'had enough of experts'. Thus we enter the age of endarkenment."

Listen to "Endarkenment" directly below and view the (censored) album art and track listing for Anaal Nathrakh's latest record further down the page. To pre-order the album, head here.

Anaal Nathrakh, "Endarkenment" Music Video

Anaal Nathrakh, Endarkenment Album Art + Track Listing

01. "Endarkenment"
02. "Thus, Always, to Tyrants"
03. "The Age of Starlight Ends"
04. "Libidinous (A Pig With Cocks in Its Eyes)"
05. "Beyond Words"
06. "Feeding the Death Machine"
07. "Create Art, Though the World May Perish"
08. "Singularity"
09. "Punish Them"
10. "Requiem"

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