BLACK CILICE new track stream – already being called “Best Album of 2015”?

Portuguese black metal cult Black Cilice premieres the new track “Prayer From Beyond” at heavily trafficked tastemakers Noisey – Music By Vice, and here, at Antichrist ‘zine. The track hails from the band’s forthcoming third album Mysteries, which Noisey is already calling the “Best Album of 2015,” set for international release on January 30th, 2015 via Iron Bonehead Productions. Truly embodying the definition of “underground,” Portugal’s Black Cilice has lurked in the shadows the past five years – or perhaps even longer, as the one-man band’s history is as mysterious as he is elusive – releasing a slew of demos and splits, all eventually culminating in two impossibly-rare albums. Dedicated to the ancient ways, Black Cilice has now teamed up with Iron Bonehead, who’s long maintained the vinyl aesthetic, to release arguably the man’s best record, Mysteries. A wave of rawness greets the wary listener, surging second-wave black metal to the bone, but underneath those layers of filth ‘n’ fatalism lies a melancholic majesty that’s truly a splendor to behold. Some could even qualify Mysteries as “beautiful” – if that beauty was bespoiled for centuries in a cold, cobwebbed castle. Intractably black metal, we find here that “purism” need not be shorthand for a dearth of ideas: Black Cilice twists the anachronisms of classic black metal into ageless, endlessly spellbinding forms, each undulating wave lapping back against the other to utterly hypnotizing effect. Medieval madness awaits within these otherworldly Mysteries…