[photos by Drew Buerhaus]
Portland, Maine-based extreme black/thrash metal trio SHABTI prepares to release their crushing Trembling And Shorn full-length in cooperation with Last Mercy Emissions next week, as the band’s Northeastern US tour with Churchburn takes off. With the record days from release, Heavy Blog Is Heavy is hosting the premiere of the track “Seven Billion Souls.”
SHABTI was founded by current/former members of Falls Of Rauros, Obsidian Tongue, Panopticon’s live lineup, and more. The band’s second album Trembling And Shorn was tracked by Todd Hutchisen at Acadia Recording Company, mixed by Dave Kaminsky at Studio Wormwood, mastered by Colin Marston at Menegroth, The Thousand Caves, and completed with grim cover art by Unexpected Specter.
With the new single’s release, SHABTI‘s vocalist/guitarist Rob Cook offers, “At first I was not going to use ‘Seven Billion Souls’ as a preview track from our upcoming album due to length, but it is one of my favorite songs to play. The second riff is relatively challenging, and I think some of our Carcass influence shows through a bit there. The song progresses to several minutes of harsh black metal and then to a pummeling outro. Lyrically, it is about the cruelty and vainglory of the human race and its’ inevitable extinction (7.5 Billion Souls has less of a ring to it).”
Heavy Blog Is Heavy writes with the song’s premiere, “This track exhibits all the musical traits we mentioned above in stark clarity; right out of the gate, it dishes out a pair of overwhelming riffs, backed by vocals dug from that deep, burning place within you that knows no silence. It goes on to iterate on these ideas, swimming in and out of the basic ideas first established, adding deeper, guttural vocals, open chords to accentuate the bleakness of the rest of the riffs, and just keeps going until it’s time to dive back down into the asphyxiating outro (listen to the bass lines which announce it, and then weave in and out of it, they’re brilliant). Thing is, the entire goddamn album is like this; there are very few moments of true respite on it. Like ‘Seven Billion Souls,’ the entirety of Trembling and Shorn wastes little time with low-energy moments, preferring instead to keep digging, keep going deeper and heavier.”
Stream SHABTI’s “Seven Billion Souls” at Heavy Blog Is Heavy RIGHT HERE.
Trembling And Shorn will be released next Friday, March 22nd in a limited run of 300 CDs and be through all digital platforms. Preorders are available where prior singles “Shrouded And Veiled” and “My Doppelganger” are streaming HERE.
SHABTI will be on tour beginning the day of the album’s release, joining Providence death/doom outfit Churchburn and Syracuse-based noisecore act Fed Ash, with Scaphism, Unearthly Trance, Sunken Cheek, Haxen, and others also playing on select dates. The tour ends March 30th with a hometown show in Portland with funeral doom lords Evoken, Churchburn, and Fed Ash. The tour admat was designed by Ethan McCarthy of Primitive Man/Cool Ghoul/Many Blessings.
SHABTI Tour Dates:
3/22/2019 O’Brien’s Pub – Allston, MA w/ Churchburn, Scaphism, Upheaval
3/23/2019 Saint Vitus Bar – Brooklyn, NY w/ Churchburn, Unearthly Trance
3/24/2019 Kung Fu Necktie – Philadelphia, PA w/ Churchburn
3/25/2019 The Depot – Baltimore, MD
3/26/2019 Basement Transmissions – Erie, PA
3/27/2019 Bug Jar – Rochester, NY
3/28/2019 Spark Art Space – Syracuse, NY w/ Fed Ash, Sunken Cheek, God of Gaps, Kalki
3/29/2019 Machines With Magnets – Pawtucket, RI w/ Churchburn, Haxen, Hell Bent, Fed Ash
3/30/2019 Geno’s Rock Club – Portland, ME w/ Evoken, Churchburn, Fed Ash [info]
SHABTI has been steadfastly crafting their brand of brooding, technical, black/death metal since emerging from the thaw of the Maine winter in 2008, eschewing gimmicks, trends, and posturing, in favor of focusing on more direct sonic pursuits. Subsequent years saw the release of two demos and the 2013 full-length, Paracusia. After several years and permutations, in 2015 the lineup finally coalesced to feature Ray Capizzo (Falls Of Rauros, Obsidian Tongue, Feral, Panopticon live) on drums, Brendan James Hayter (Obsidian Tongue) on bass, and founding member Rob Cook on guitar and vocals. Over the years, SHABTI has played many live shows throughout the Northeastern United States with bands such as Absu, Today Is The Day, and Primitive Man.
SHABTI‘s long-awaited second full-length Trembling And Shorn deploys forty-two minutes of precisely calculated and savagely executed blackened death, a gauntlet of technical razor wire riffs delivered with the percussive force of an armada of warships, the band’s influences of Dissection, Death, Morbid Angel, and Carcass boiling just below the surface at every turn. Trembling And Shorn is a blistering album fans of Absu, Aura Noir, Marduk, Ceremonial Castings, 1349, and Watain should hear.
https://www.facebook.com/metalshabti
https://shabti.bandcamp.com
http://facebook.com/lastmercyxiii
https://www.instagram.com/last.mercy.emissions