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A thirty four-minute spectral avalanche of largely improvised raw black metal fury, Imperial Cult's debut LP Spasm of Light was recorded live in 2017 as a single, half hour long trance-inducing movement of embodied chaos designed to dismantle the psyche. The phantasmal vocals, combined with the repetitive intensity of the music, create an impenetrable fortress casting its spectral shadow unto a scorched and barren wasteland. As previously seen in bands like Fell Voices, on this mesmerizing inaugural work the Dutch band have erected an unyielding wall of black metal drone trance whose framework is rooted on repetitive, cyclical, and vorticose cyclones of furious raw black immersed in a storming haze of decaying ambient-noise that defies logic and sanity.
The three members involved in the project are key figures in the Dutch extreme/experimental underground, and are active in bands like Turia, Nusquama, Cryptae, Lubbert Das, Horrid Apparition, Dead Neanderthals, Solar Temple, Heavy Natural, Iskandr, Celestial Bodies, and DungeönHammer as well as tied in with the label Haeresis Noviomagi. Thematically, Imperial Cult is a reconnaissance of an inherited culture of physical violence and material exploitation. Marching towards self destruction, we must understand the inevitability of violence and quenchless nature of bloodshed. Imperial Cult refers to ancient forms of divine worship of emperors as deities, and the cognate contemporary worship of those who will ultimately destroy us. It is a call to power, to reclaim the sacrificial logic which enables our ruination.