Apparitions From the Cosmic Void
Egregore—Servants of the Second Death (2026 / Feral Death Metal Chaos)
Hello internet pals of music. Today we’re cranking up the promo machine for a new music video out now through 20 Buck Spin.
Recently, I was watching a clip from Sergei Parajanov’s 1969 film Sayat-Nova (The Colour of Pomegranates). It’s a film that has stayed with me since I first saw it in the 1990s1, and viewing that clip I made a connection to what I have been attempting with videos I’ve recently made: an ambiguous fever dream slide show—or, for lack of a better description, a visual poetry, which sounds terribly pretentious. Parajanov, Alejandro Jodorowski, and even Tarsem Singh have all had their influence on me.
Roughly twenty years ago, a poster artist I know that specialized in work for punk and metal bands once said that the key to keeping metal fans happy was to not take risks. There were unwritten rules, and breaking them was a pretty surefire way to not get more work.
But things change. I remember people I knew thumbed their noses at the band Oranssi Pazuzu, for bringing psychedelic elements into Black Metal—writing off anything that deviated from the standard formula. They came around, because Oranssi Pazuzu makes strange music that is way more interesting and frightening than the endless factory line of one-man band demo tapes that sound like sticking your ear into an electric can-opener, and all have the same exact xeroxed cover photo of a dude in the woods with a sword. At the same time Death Metal bands seemed to be going in wild directions and that was acceptable. What do I know, really?
But as extreme metal has become more visible and even, fashionable, I still get excited about it because there are less and less rules, creating way more interesting directions for the sound to go in. Most of the albums I’m stoked on won’t make Anthony Fantano’s year end list. Won’t get a Pitchfork rating—ok, some do. But it’s good that there’s gatekeeping still, I guess. Social media has done great things for bands like Tomb Mold and Blood Incantation, but it’s also given us Këkht Aräkh & Bladee, a combo that is as tasteless as mayonnaise on rice cakes. The surfacing from the underground always creates some wretched ripples.
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Egregore have a solid pedigree in the underground, with members of Mitochondrion, Reversed, Ruinous Power and others. They released a really chaotic sounding album in 2019 called The Word of His Law, but this new album is much more expansive. When they approached me for a video, I was excited for the challenge—how would I adapt that slowly shifting fever dream feeling to how frenetic I knew their music to be?
The song they sent me was not what I was preparing for.
It begins how I expected: tight and galloping. It sounds being inside the skull of someone in the throes of lunacy. But halfway through, the pressure blows the lid off and suddenly that tight, cramped space becomes huge. My goal was to try and replicate that rhythm, but to also try and create another sense of pressure in the second half, like a massive thing opening in yourself, over and over, coming up and up and up but never giving you a release. In a sense, this is two separate songs and two separate videos, or maybe just two separate chapters of a story.
I don’t fully grasp an understanding of an egregore other than as an autonomous entity created by a group—a psychic outgrowth of a combination of individual wills. With that in mind, some of the imagery in the video is an attempt to illustrate that formation.
And to tie it back to what I was saying before about tradition, I don’t think too many Death Metal bands would have gone with this fifteen years ago, and maybe not as many would trust it even now. Is Egregore even a Death Metal band, really? But I’m honoured that they placed their faith me, and especially for such an amazing song.
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There’s even a playlist I made several years ago, just because I love that title.
Classy video!
Dope song and video! I've been grooving to Stillamentum by Gorrch lately. Scorching death metal.