‘Existentialismus’ finds ABDUCTION at the apex of their powers, delivering an uncompromising vision of black metal that bridges ancient wisdom with modern despair. Standing as their most direct and emotionally complex work to date, this release sees the band wielding their trademark intensity with newfound purpose, creating an album that’s both spiritually challenging and sonically devastating. Through masterful songcraft and liberated vocal approaches, ABDUCTION proves why they’ve become one of the UK’s most essential extreme metal acts.
Abduction’s rapid progression from obscure one-man project to one of the UK’s most vital and distinctive extreme metal bands has been fascinating to behold. With many bands currently paying homage to black metal’s glory years, and just as many are attempting to connect unrelated workings to that legacy, Abduction’s music manages to be both recognisably authentic and imbued with its own spirit. And never has this been truer than in the new album, Existentialismus.
After an incredibly prolific recording run that saw a trilogy of albums released from 2017 to 2019, 2022’s explosive Black Blood, the band’s first album for the revered label Candlelight Records, proved an undeniable milestone for the band. A fiercely expansive work, it saw Abduction marching confidently into new territories, blending raw black metal with progressive and psychedelic songwriting and slower, post-metal-esque textures, raising the group’s profile considerably.
On the face of it, Existentialismus is actually a return to more stripped-down mechanics, and yet it is arguably the band’s most electrifying, emotionally complex and personal recording to date. The searing and almost unrelenting aural violence remain, this being as heavy and exhilarating a collection of songs as ever, but immersive songs such as ‘Truth is as Sharp a Sword as Vengeance’ and the ‘Razors of Occam’ are soaked in new level of emotion and personal investment.
“The most obvious expansion is in the voice,” considers vocalist and founder A|V. “I felt that vocally, I had more freedom to express the lyrics and messages with fewer genre leashes. Given the themes of pain, frustration, and fear involved, it made sense to convey that in its most natural state rather than performing to certain expectations. The vocals and lyrics are important to me, so I let them breathe and counterpoint the bands playing.”
“There’s a danger of a character becoming a parody of itself very often in art and music,” the frontman expands. “I have always tried to evolve myself and the presentation of Abduction to closely align these artistic ideas with an ever-changing, ever-learning concept. This includes lyrics and the performance of the voice and the instruments. Musically, I wanted something more direct and with less ‘space’ in line with the frustration of the songs and the motivation to action. In previous works, I’ve overstated my own compulsion to grow and reach a certain point of spirituality beyond that of simply being. I felt that we are capable of some kind of epoch-defining alteration of consciousness. However, it has become clearer recently that this is probably just a pipe dream which we will never reach. In fact, it seems that the only potential defining character arc for the human race may simply be mutually assured destruction. Tragic and yet expected. How do I reconcile this reality with my responsibilities of family? I don’t. It is a constant pendulum that swings between preparing the best I can for a future I hope doesn’t come and ignoring it completely, surrounding myself with nature and staying away from the city as much as possible. The wisdom is knowing that you, in fact, no nothing at all.”
Having become one of the UK’s most visible black metal acts on the live circuit, bringing their ritualistic and immersive performances to audiences at club shows and festivals as Damnation, Bloodstock, Incineration, Fortress, Doomsday, Mass Destruction, Samhain, Reaperfest and Eradication, Existentialismus has been recorded, for the first time, as a full band. That sense of scale is palpable and reflects the ambition and embittered grandeur of the new material, an impressively cohesive combination of otherworldly atmospheres, fiery aggression and apocalyptic tension.
“It’s inspired by the juxtaposition of this horrible post-truth era with its contradictions and the simple, metaphorical truths that began in ancient religions of the crumbling past. Somewhere between a biblical gospel and a Nietzschean nightmare. As a father, there’s a particular terror in seeing all that our grandfathers built, physically and morally, being torn apart and reduced to a commodity and wondering what kind of world my son will inherit.”
“I am by no means a philosopher – I desperately lack the patience,” A|V admits. “But my observations of the modern Western humane race have become particularly bleak, and this informs my lyrical writing process. Art as a reaction to life and experience. This is laid out in the first track, ‘A Legacy of Sores’, which posits that most of us here, in the current year, have become an alarming pairing of being both too sensitive and yet without any core beliefs to stand on. (‘Wet skin now paper thin, reveals a core of dust’) I think this is a mixture of a post-religious society and the acceleration of technology to the point at which its claws are deeply in us. Have you tried to live without a smartphone recently?”
“I believe firmly in the wisdom that nothing good comes easy and that we will have to endure a certain level of pressure or be required to show restraint to gain anything worth having. This is echoed in many ancient cultures and religions worldwide and across aeons. The more you know, the less you know. I see little evidence of this in the modern world of entitlement and instant dopamine-charged reactionary thoughts and self-gratification processes. We seem to be throwing away all of our gratitude, all of our basic humanity in place of virtual itch-scratching constantly. Is it any wonder there is a mental health epidemic or skyrocketing suicide figures? Having moved recently back to the countryside of my childhood, I am constantly reminded of the stoicism and eternal patience of my elder family: the generation of the Industrial Revolution, who built walls, mills, tilled fields, and fetched water, mostly with their bare hands and without electricity. The generations of war and the constant threats to their meagre existence.”