The Hierarch is the fourth album by the French black metal band Hegemon and their first full-length in seven years. My comrade Leperkahn wrote about the first advance track from the album (here) in September, and today we bring you the premiere of a second one: “Credo Quia Absurdum“.

There is much about the song that summons images of a wolf pack tearing into its prey, with teeth flashing, blood spraying, and massed snarls splitting the air in a hair-raising frenzy. It’s pure black metal savagery, replete with thundering drums and slashing riffs. But as good as Hegemon are at delivering sonic barbarism, that’s only part of the exotic and esoteric adventure in this song.

The first sign that the song isn’t simply a lethal dose of mayhem is the beautiful acoustic guitar introduction (which is reprised later in the track), and further signs come in the striking melody that emerges soon after the initial burst of thrashing ferocity, the dark majesty of the booming grooves that follow, and the array of differing vocals that accompany the dominant bestial ones.

A dynamic song and a very powerful and interesting one, “Credo Quia Absurdum” is the mature work of a band adept at harnessing different elements of a rich black tradition, the kind of music that’s both energizing the first time you hear it and worth hearing again in order to consider more carefully each of its layers.

The Hierarch will be released by Season of Mist in North America on November 13 across multiple CD and LP formats, and it’s available for pre-order here. And by the way, if you missed the first song to premiere from the album — “Interpreting Signs For War: Aruspicine” — you can listen to it via the Bandcamp stream below. Here’s the complete track list:

1. Hatred From The Core: Tempus Incognito

2. Interpreting Signs For War: Aruspicine

3. Elysean Expectations, Earthly Deceptions

4. Rays Of Lie: There Will Be A Time You Will Give Up

5. Atomos: Seed Of The Quantic Gods

6. Renovatio Imperii

7. Credo Quia Absurdum

8. Hierarch: The Empire Of Zero

https://hegemon.bandcamp.com

https://www.facebook.com/Hegemon-126258830754852/

http://www.hegemon666.net/