AArtist: Interitio
Title: The Earth Reclaims Us
Type: EP
Label: Digital / Fiadh Productions
At about twenty minutes by my 28:55 rule (c’mon, you know the album) it’s just shy of an album. And does it matter? Nope not one jot. Also its another where I simply cannot recall how I came across this until Fiadh Productions reminded me of the mysterious circumstances surrounding it, reprinted below. Which means my slight obsession with it is….worrying..
‘Gnashing Teeth’ begins with caution, an ancient sounding, gothic melody of grey misty nights and shrouded landscapes until the unholy racket ruptures the sound. It is an assault, a brutal beatdown of crust coated blackened death that lashes out in all directions and yet here, there, an insistent melody will grab you. The vocals are demonic, a sound full of sharp teeth and clogged throats, the tempo surges into speed then falls back into a malevolent, slow force grinding at you. And suddenly, as though breaking from a dream the strange slightly hissing gothic world returns.
‘Waves Of Despair’ slowly rumbles through the planes and appears with a thick black/death slow pounding. The riff has a strange ebb and flow to it which hurts my head as though something is trying to get inside. It rumbles, grinds and rolls slowly across some blackened landscape dragging something vile and blasphemous behind it. Distorted screams or winds or something worse intermittently howl across the background. Slowly the storm quietens into waves of soft grey distortion, a jumbled melody rising into a pulse…
‘Not My Kind’ thunders and blasts its way into existence, death metal curst perhaps that d-beat and something that might be….a twisted, groove dodging between blasts that sound like mortars going off. This is both weirdly straight forward and utter glorious filthy out of kilter chaos like finding a pattering in light glancing off shrapnel. And it is just something designed to possess you.
‘Cavernous’ closes this filthy and abhorrent record. Slow almost DS synths slide into a grim guitar, those howls become sheet metal screams as a ‘melody’ squirms around for a while until the more terrifying quiet seeps in. Its like being trapped in the dark, below ground, knowing that it is there with you, playing with you, stalking. It has all the time in the world. You’re not going anywhere….not now.
I love albums like this; distorted, dark, thick with fetid riffs and ponderous leaden heavy drumming. The vocals are ravenous, demonic and dripping something….unpleasant. The noise, the eerie background melodies and soundscapes that fade in and out like the world flickering between two planes is stunning. Doom, death blackened crust and filth.
This album is a trap.
Gizmo
https://interitio.bandcamp.com/album/-
The Earth Reclaims Us | Interitio | Fiadh Productions
The Lore
Sixty-six years ago, while a Swedish work crew was forced to move several graves in the small village of Gävle during a terrible flood, something remarkable was discovered. Alongside the decomposed corpse of one Anders Gustaf Verner was found a half inch reel-to-reel machine and a single tape, both damaged, but salvageable.
Gävle’s mayor, Karin Wanngård, immediately took a keen personal interest in the vintage device and any recording that might be included in the mostly sealed case buried in the earth. Though water and silt had damaged the electronics of the recorder and its audio, she was steadfast in her curiosity… she had to know what had been recorded, how, by who and to what purpose.
The old and tattered tape was labelled, “Interitio”, a Latin term primarily meaning destruction and ruin. Upon learning of the dug up find, local Gävle präst, Father Edward Hacknoosh, was noted as sharing his “serious concern for anyone meddling with this ancient devilry”, as the buried man Verner was mentioned in the church’s directory for Satanic tendencies, the widespread of ill will and an unhealthy obsession with all things occult while he still drew breath.
Mayor Wanngård could not be led astray from her new sonic project, stating that, “this could be an incredibly interesting find”, and that “perhaps it would generate some tourism to the quiet and still tiny village of Gävle”. Off the record, she later wished she had never found Verner, the machine or the recording. “It was a most terrible tale of woe, this whole ordeal”, she said.
The recording was then shipped off to the Böck Cassette Manufacturing Plant in Stockholm, where four songs were carefully mastered at Wanngård’s own expense. Additional tracks found to be recorded were too badly warbled to be restored, some audio had been documented—or performed—in reverse. Before the tracks could be shipped back to the mayor, the entire manufacturing plant caught fire and burned to the ground. All but a single of its workers were caught/consumed in the flames, fumes and caustic chemical explosions. That survivor lived through the ordeal, but was too disfigured and fearful to be part of this article.
Many years passed. Then, just last month, a single solitary dusty and black cassette arrived on the desk of Gävle’s only music newspaper, The Skorpa, Scribed only with “The Earth Reclaims Us”, in what is thought—though not yet tested—to be in human blood. Chief music editor at the publication, Karl Martin Sandberg, listened to the filthy, tormenting and deprived music in awe, disbelief and a wild panic. He decided to ship the release to Fiadh Productions, purveyors of some of the darkest metal music available these days. Fiadh immediately paid both the heavy licensing and finder’s fees in order to bring to a brighter light—and out of the deepest ,dark shadows—Interitio’s first collection of dark hymns.
Though little is known of the project’s members or devilish intentions, the gruesome horde delivers a supernatural masterpiece of crust, death, grind and d-beat. Whoever Sweden’s Anders Gustaf Verner was, he was up to something sinister in documenting these songs. Hails!
Interitio
A Latin term primarily meaning: destruction, ruin, passing away or ceasing to exist, often used to describe the total cessation of existence.
Walking The Liminal Space 