Next month, legendary black metal innovators Blut Aus Nord are set to release their new full-length album, «Hallucinogen», once again through Debemur Morti, the label responsible for every release of the band since 2010’s «What Once Was… Liber I».

According the album’s press release, it “begins a new era for Blut Aus Nord, ending the cycle of clandestine industrialised dissonance that culminated with previous transmission Deus Salutis Meae and moving skyward into freshly melodic territories of progressive clarity.” Indeed, throughout the last decade, the one incursion made by the band into more melodic territories took place in «Saturnian Poetry», the glorious third instalment in its «Memoria Vetusta» series. However, the remainder of the press release hints that while «Hallucinogen» will stray as far from the industrial realms as «Memoria Vetusta» did, it’ll do so in a different way, through “interweaving dreamlike choirs, inimitable harmonic developments, reflective clean guitars, palpable organic drumming and a welcome rock and roll swagger” and by virtue of being “a spacious, emotionally wide-ranging record that finds Blut Aus Nord more open than ever, full of life and revelling in the element of surprise.”

There might be another reason for the heralding of a new era in the band’s sound, namely, the inception of Yerûšelem, the new overtly industrial project of Blut Aus Nord founders Vindsval and W.D. Feld, which we conjecture will probably absorb most of those tendencies in the coming years, leaving the duo free to explore different facets elsewhere.

Recorded and mixed at the Earthsound Studio and mastered by Bruno Varea at the Upload Studio, «Hallucinogen» is further described as “yet another coherent universe from a band who have moved away from familiar tropes, aesthetics and comfort zones to unite – with Dionysian spirit – under/overland, surface/void, metropolis/mountain and the vastness of the mind’s eye into an indispensable addition to their unparalleled body of work.” Its artwork, displayed below, was created by Dehn Sora, the musician behind Throane and visual artist whose pieces had already graced Blut Aus Nord albums such as «777 – Cosmosophy», «The Work Which Transforms God», and «Memoria Vetusta III: Saturnian Poetry» (seen above).

«Hallucinogen» is set for release on October 11 via Debemur Morti on cassette, cd, digital, and vinyl formats. Pre-orders can be found at this location.

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