| IRON BONEHEAD PRODUCTIONS, in conspiracy with DARK ADVERSARY, is proud to present BLACK FUNERAL's highly anticipated ninth album, Ankou and the Death Fire. Formed in 1993, BLACK FUNERAL are one of the founders of American black metal. The band's first two albums, 1995's Vampyr: Throne of the Beast and 1997's Empire of Blood, are widely considered black metal classics and rank among the earliest releases on the cult Full Moon Productions label.
Since the beginning, the band has been guided by the boundless vision of Michael Ford, who has also earned international respect as a leading author on Luciferianism and occultism. Although many lineups have come and gone since those early years, BLACK FUNERAL has now found its strongest formation yet with Ankou and the Death Fire, featuring Drowning the Light mastermind Azgorh Drakenhof on guitar, bass, and keyboards.
Musically, Ankou and the Death Fire is a purely black metal record brimming with medieval majesty and malnourished misery, a black flame both bright and bleary, all laced with Ford's characteristically chilling ambient soundscapes. The album guides the listener through an otherworldly realm of shadows, darkness, and the mythological cycle of death, drawing inspiration from ancient Celtic lore. Spanning the Iron Age through the medieval Celtic period, it centers on myth and traditions of Death and the Otherworld.
Guitarist Azgorh entombs a cold and ancient foundation in grim, withered melodies, while the drums of An Unnamed Spirit evoke the phantom march of the dead. Vocalist Akhtya Nachttoter, also known as Michael Ford, layers otherworldly howls and screams across different frequencies, drawing the listener into the jaws of Death and the legions of dark spirits and reapers of Celtic mythology. His ghostlike soundscapes and multilayered vocal invocations carry the listener through waves of haunting black metal.
Each song is a distinct journey in which dark gods behold processions of figures bearing skull cups filled with the blood of the living. The energy shaped within this recording channels Celtic forms of the Reaper, most notably the Ankou. A grim harvester of the dead and collector of souls from Breton folklore, the Ankou appears in many guises, from a thin skeletal man with long white hair and a wide-brimmed hat to a shrouded skeleton carrying a scythe or sword as he travels with his cart of death. The Ankou is sometimes said to be Cain, regarded here as a witch-father within Luciferian tradition.
This album manifests numerous forms of the Ankou and the Dullahan, channeling the energies associated with their death magick.
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