Necronautical have announced that their fourth album, Slain In The Spirit, will be released on 20 August 2021 via Candlelight Records, with the first track, Hypnagogia, available to watch below.
The band, whose name means ‘to explore death’, are well respected in the British Black Metal underground. While their sound has become synonymous with the darker side of Metal, the new album promises to deliver an aggressive iron fist, delivering their metallic attack, meshed with symphonic elements, with machine-like ferocity.
“I always think that we are known as a typical black band, but there’s always been a lot of deviance from it as well,” Naut told MetalTalk.
“We’ve always had an idea about how we wanted the band to be, and we’ve always been a fairly straight-ahead Black Metal band, visually, but we had a discussion before we made this album and said, ‘Maybe we’ll stop using the typical corpse paint.'”
Slain In The Spirit was recorded at Foel Studios in rural North Wales with producer Chris Fielding (Winterfylleth, Primordial, Boss Keloid, Conan), and its themes look at death from a philosophical point of view.
“What we’re doing now is more of a fusion between Black Metal and Death Metal, with progressive and symphonic elements,” says Naut. “We felt that perhaps we were turning people who might like us off because I think they saw us as just a Black Metal band. There’s more to us than that.
“Generally, we like a certain thing in Black Metal, when it’s very grandiose or dark, like what Emperor would do. The artwork and the presentation is on the mystical or fantastical side of things, rather than this monochrome design. It’s more fantastical, almost psychedelic at points.”
Behind the human realm
The lyrical themes of the album deal with “altered states of consciousness,” and Naut compares this to the rabbit holes of the mind that Aleister Crowley would travel down in his quest for enlightenment.
How does Slain In The Spirit examine what is behind the human realm?
“It’s all about dream-like states, or trance-like states,” Naut says. “The album title, Slain In The Spirit, comes from the idea of how, in the Evangelical Church system, people would become so overcome by the power of spirituality that they would talk in tongues. It’s the idea of being overcome by something and put into a different set of reality.
“Cults and Aleister Crowley were another one of the inspirations, in the way that he would try and induce spiritual experiences in his followers or disciples. Whether that was through atrocious means like drugs or desperate deprivation, ritual magic was still done to create altered states of consciousness. We definitely looked at various forms of mysticism in the lyrics.”
For an example of this, you should look no further than the track Necropsychonautics. This song looks at the idea of death causing a psychedelic effect on the brain.
“Supposedly, when you’re dying, you experience a hallucination. I believe there’s a release of DMT into your brain,” explains Naut. “So that song is supposed to encapsulate that abstract experience of dying and reality-altering as it happens.
“It’s asking the question of whether that is where people’s perception of the afterlife, or walking into the light, comes from.”
Necronautical release Slain In The Spirit on 20 August 2021.
Necronautical
Naut – Lead Vocals, Guitar
Carcarrion – Guitar, Backing Vocals
Anchorite – Bass, Backing Vocals, Clean Vox
Slugh – Drums
Slain In The Spirit
1 – Ritual & Recursion
2 – Occult Ecstatic Indoctrination
3 – Slain In The Spirit
4 – Hypnagogia
5 – Pure Conciousness Event
6 – Necropsychonautics
7 – Contorting In Perpetuity
8 – Death Magick Triumphant
9 – Disciple
