EPIPHANICTRUTH

Masked extreme metallers want to help you find truth in an age of lies

BEWILDERING TIMES SEEM to call for bewildering music, but while this shadowy collective are keen to splice and cross-pollinate as many styles and genres as possible, they’re also encouraging listeners to dig for a deeper truth. The band’s debut album – the frankly stunning Dark Triad: Bitter Psalms To A Sordid Species – spills ambition, ideas and songwriting wizardry from every orifice as it picks apart subjects like corruption, fake news and political demagoguery.

“A decade of austerity, the Brexit referendum, the election of right wing populist leaders around the world, Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing, the Panama papers and Cambridge

Analytica scandals are the main events that guided us”, explains the project’s anonymous mastermind. “There’s a concerted effort to delude people into believing there is no objective truth, that our worst aspects don’t exist, that genuine problems don’t even exist, that everyone is equally ‘bad as each other’. We think the concept of truth is pretty important, yet it appears to have been brushed aside in favour of wilful delusion.”

Viewing these themes via a prism of personality disorders – psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism – the band’s outlook tends to be less than cheery, but that’s not to say they haven’t got sound advice for those seeking to survive the modern age’s grinding lies and idiocies. “You must allow yourself time to step away from the brutal truths of life or the deliberate attempts to distort them”, says the band’s leader. “Ultimately all you can do is attempt to live a life that benefits both yourself and those around you, which is often easier said than done. You owe it to yourself to engross yourself in a passion that makes life worth living, and you owe it to others to do something that might aid society and help make other’s lives worth living too.”

DARK TRIAD: BITTER PSALMS TO A SORDID SPECIES IS OUT NOW VIA CHURCH ROAD RECORDS