Listen to the startling debut release from Rome's shadowy black metallers Gaerea

Much as everyone bangs on about the US scene bringing a new, emotionally wrought sense of the epic to the hardcore/black metal highway, Europe has long been a breeding ground for just this kind firmament-frying fusion of grit and grandeur, and the bands don’t tend to look like they’ve just slouched out of the college library either.

From the likes of Regarde Les Hommes Tomber through to Throane, Celeste, Deluge and Germany’s Secrets Of The Moon – all bands whose vast, occultic/devotional sense of atmosphere and fearless opposition to going about their business in any kind rational manner have never left them open to any charges of hipsterism – you can now add a new band whose name deserves to be written in fire across the heavens: Rome’s Gaerea.

This shadowy and intriguingly hooded collective’s forthcoming debut, self-titled mini-album basically sounds like a celestial body committing harakiri. The band’s cryptic statements thus far point to an urge to kickstart what’s left of the human consciousness, and the five tracks released today via Everlasting Spew Records carry an incendiary charge that will leave your brain buzzing long after their numerologist-baiting 27:27 runtime.

Thanks to the label and the various entities that make up Gaerea, we have an exclusive stream of the debut in full, so prepare to have your soul torn apart and give yourself to the caustic yet elevating glory of Gaerea below!

Ascend to Gaerea’s Facebook page here!

And order the Gaerea EP here!

Having freelanced regularly for the Melody Maker and Kerrang!, and edited the extreme metal monthly, Terrorizer, for seven years, Jonathan is now the overseer of all the album and live reviews in Metal Hammer. Bemoans his obsolete superpower of being invisible to Routemaster bus conductors, finds men without sideburns slightly circumspect, and thinks songs that aren’t about Satan, swords or witches are a bit silly.