Alkaloid are metal's maddest scientists. The Bavarian band have crafted songs about what lies beneath the Arctic crust, on top of an ongoing, multi-part saga about a galactic civilization that ascends to god-like levels of domination.
'Numen' is their most intricate, thought-provoking and batshit insane album yet. The 70-minute behemoth hits shelves and streaming platforms tomorrow, but you can listen to all eleven tracks now thanks to our friends at No Clean Singing.
Pre-order: https://shop.season-of-mist.com/list/alkaloid-numen
Pre-save: https://orcd.co/numenpresave
Alkaloid are still bonded together by their love of extreme metal. After all, they are a super group that's assembled from foundational members of Obscura, Dark Fortress, Triptykon and other genre heavyweights. The fiery, finger-tapped solo that squiggles loose halfway through lead single "Clusterfuck" is crushed like an ant between colliding moons.
But Numen finds the band playing around with all kinds of experiments. "The Cambrian Explosion" flips death metal on its horned head with seductive flurries of jazz and flamenco, while the title track is a dizzying seven-minute yarn of how a supermassive black hole came to burp up an unheard-of cosmic artifact that gives both the song - and the album - its name.
"We proudly present our third album 'Numen', says Alkaloid. "Where 'The Malkuth Grimoire' dealt with the rearrangement of existing particles into new forms, and 'Liquid Anatomy' with the creation of new particles, this album looks at the universe from the perspective of imaginary deities detached altogether from the cycle of life and death of incarnated organisms. This hypothetical viewpoint is reflected on the scales of both biological and cosmological processes. If one could shape and manipulate life and the cosmos itself, how would one go about it, and what would it mean for everything in that cosmos?
Progressive extreme metallers Alkaloid prepare to unfurl their new many-tentacled full-length, 'Numen' via Season of Mist. Featuring members of Triptykon, Obscura, Dark Fortress, and Obsidious, the Germany-based quartet of Morean (vocals, guitars, concepts), Hannes Grossmann (drums), Christian Münzner (guitars), and Linus Klausenitzer (bass) construct upon, expand away from, and journey between previous full-lengths The Malkuth Grimoire (2015) and Liquid Anatomy (2018) on Numen. In every respect, Alkaloid recommence the purposeful warp of various metallic genres they dimensionally blur. Tracks like the video single for "Clusterfuck,” “The Cambrian Explosion,” and “Numen” posit heavy cosmological/Lovecraftian theoretic themes on top of musically-adept songs that are accessible yet undeniably intricate.
“We’ve all been around the block a few times by now as metal musicians,” says songsmith Morean. “The feeling that we’ve outgrown the narrow niche of pure extreme metal was a main motivator to start this band in the first place, ten years ago. The ‘prog’ tag is handy for us because, per definition, it already encompasses a wider range of possible styles and influences we can get away with than any one specific metal genre. This means we could ensure from the beginning that we’ll always be able to write whatever we want, no matter how crazy our ideas become. The heart of this band is always the songwriting, and we all like complex and virtuosic music in all its diverse manifestations. However, we do share a love for death metal as the smallest common denominator in the band, and we wanted to make sure no one thinks that just because we include melodies, clean guitars, and influences from other genres, we’d automatically sacrifice the brutality and relentless esthetic of extreme metal.”
'Numen' was written during the pandemic, but it was planned long before the scourge of disease wracked humanity. As a result, the songwriting sessions were predictably not "in the room" but over the Internet after the band members had isolated and worked on their constituent parts. Demos flew back and forth. Then, Tunker left amicably for personal reasons. Alkaloid could’ve folded, but the close-knit group soldiered on. They intensely relied on the professionalism and dependability of the collective to drive 'Numen' to completion. The complications of the two years it took to sonically inscribe the album into aeonic vastness didn’t fragment the end result. Instead, the process accelerated Alkaloid’s lambent, eldritch explorations. “Clusterfuck,” “The Cambrian Explosion,” “Numen,” and “A Fool’s Desire” expertly bridge the past to the future, where Alkaloid’s originative, daedal storytelling captures (and holds hostage) the imagination.
The title, 'Numen', got its start at the dawning of Alkaloid. It’s a word that Morean fell in love with immediately, and he knew it had a place in his creative endeavors. Whereas The Malkuth Grimoire talked about combining existing elements into new structures, and Liquid Anatomy dealt with the creation of new elements, 'Numen' tries to look at the universe from a kind of meta-perspective from an imaginary god, as if the space that everything happens in was given a voice and a role as observer and shaper of everything that happens. In it, sentient panspermic mycelia are swathed in Lovecraftian nastiness—like Shub-Niggurath and the Fungi from Yuggoth—while the new Dyson chapters interpret the aspiration to reach divinity rather literally, reshaping the entire galaxy by manipulating spacetime itself. Desperate to escape their doom, the Cephalopods from previous songs have returned, too. 'Numen' is dense but not impenetrable. In fact, from the first moments of opener, "Qliphosis," to the final contemplation of closer "Alpha Aur,” Alkaloid prove to be more charismatic than ever.
Line-up
Morean - guitars, vocals
Christian Münzner - guitars
Linus Klausenitzer - bass
Hannes Grossmann - drums
Recording Studio: Mordor Sounds, Nürnberg, Germany.
Producer: Hannes Grossmann & Alkaloid
Recording & mixing: Hannes Grossmann
Mastering: Alan Douches at West West Side Music studio in Hudson Valley, NY.
Guest musicians
Adam Wallis, Cydney McQuillan-Grace, John Schaffer, Lauren Gill, Sara Robalo, Shannon Bedford
Additional choir tracks on "The Cambrian Explosion" and "Shades of Shub-Niggurath"
Former Alkaloid guitarist Danny Tunker contributed to "The Cambrian Explosion"
Artwork & photos: Christian Martin Weiss
Biography: Chris Dick
Pre-order: https://shop.season-of-mist.com/list/alkaloid-numen
Pre-save: https://orcd.co/numenpresave
Format
Digital download
CD Digipak w/mediabook
Black Vinyl (Gatefold)
Coloured Vinyl (Gatefold)
Links
https://alkaloid-band.com/
https://www.facebook.com/alkaloid.metal
https://www.instagram.com/alkaloid_metal/
https://twitter.com/AlkaloidBand
https://www.youtube.com/c/Alkaloidbandmetal
https://alkaloid-band.bandcamp.com
https://open.spotify.com/artist/4KMQDFaAsPEKcqKzdvkYKc