(Austin Weber brings us the premiere of a song from the forthcoming debut album by Enthean.)

While, until now, I’ve yet to cover South Carolina progressive black metal/technical death metal horde Enthean here at NCS, I’ve been torturously waiting for these guys to release something ever since hearing their 2013 demo, Tones Of Desecration.

Well, it looks like 2016 is finally the year of Enthean, since their debut full-length, Priests Of Annihilation, finally drops on May 20th. In advance of its release, we’ve got a skull-shattering new jam from the band to premiere for you today called “Before You, I Am”.

Like a lot of their songs, “Before You, I Am” frequently straddles, crosses, and traverses an immense number of styles, usually somewhere between proggier black metal and serrated technical death metal. This sub-sub-genre in tech death is somewhat a new thing, with the only bands doing it previously in a way that I loved being such groups as Singularity, Warforged, Irreversible Mechanism, Solae Of Requiem, Scrambled Defuncts, and perhaps a few others I’m forgetting at this moment.

I think where Enthean largely succeeds is in subverting the equation by having the symphonic and epic black metal elements often be the core of the music, with the tech-death elements sprinkled overtop for sonic variety, as compared to what is usually done, with the tech-death as the focus and the black metal elements a smaller portion of the music.

As far as “Before You, I Am” is concerned, it starts off like one of the more Emperor and Old Man’s Child influenced, black-metal-focused songs on the album, yet later takes a slow, mid-song break and builds back up into a ferocious storm of technical wizardry abounding in deathly proggy ambition.

If you like what you hear, the album can be pre-ordered here. And I’ll be streaming it early in full in about two weeks at Metal-Injection for anyone wanting to hear more! Having heard all of it already, I can confidently say this is one hell of a fucking record that’s well worth your time and money.

Priests Of Annihilation will be self-released by the band on Friday, May 20th.

https://www.facebook.com/Enthean/

https://enthean.bandcamp.com/