Black metal provocateurs Liturgy unveil a new track

Having caused what’s known as The Great Black Metal Shitstorm Of 2011 with their last album Aesthetica and the manifesto, Transcendental Black Metal, penned by frontman Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, New York’s post-BM agitators Liturgy are returning with what’s sure to be another shot across the scene’s bows.

Due to be released on March 24 via Thrill Jockey Records, Liturgy’s third album, The Ark Work, is another stage of evolution for a band determined to redefine a movement whose future is already hotly contested, and whose willingness to fly far from the template is sure to generate wrath and wonder in equal measure. Prepare to man your respective barricades, because we have an exclusive album preview in the form of the track, Quetzalcoatl, taken from The Ark Work, and offering a glimpse into the tremulous and no doubt soon to be hotly debated sonic realms they’re moving in now. Is it still black metal? Are they going to claim it’s still black metal? Are black metal musicians still going to pen open letters accusing them of gatecrashing a scene, laying down the law and going off to do some hipster/over-intellectualised take on the sound? Or is this black metal’s drive to the sublime given added impetus by having been freed from the orthodox trappings? Hit play below and may the games begin!

Put away your copy of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull and rematerialise on the spiritual plane that is Liturgy’s Facebook page here!

Pre-order _The Ark Work _ here!

And enter the bonus level that is the album trailer below!

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.