THE BEAST

LUNAR APPARITIONS, a division of NEBULAR CARCOMA, is proud to present MALUS VOTUM's striking debut album, Tradition, on digipack CD format. Hailing from the United States, MALUS VOTUM are an otherwise-new entity whose two primary members hold a wealth of musical experience in the metal underground. While both drummer/bassist/vocalist Grond Nefarious and guitarist/vocalist Goatlord have played in Portland's Panzergod at various times (Grond Nefarious also plays in Death Fetishist and previously played in Blut der Nacht), MALUS VOTUM is the first time the duo have joined together in a blood pact to create the purest black metal possible. Fittingly, the band's debut album is titled Tradition. Whereas so much nowadays USBM tends toward either bestial or "post" iterations - one unremittingly savage (and sometimes overly so), the other impure or at least betraying black metal's ancient aims - MALUS VOTUM effortlessly create a windswept mysticism that's pure second-wave classicism at its very best. To enter the four-song/34-minute Tradition is to enter a snow-covered forest, a lonely castle keep, and foggy seascape alike, so evocatively ethereal is their atmospheric surge. Likewise, the duo's cascading melodicism betrays no small amount of darkness and drama, their execution as passionate as it is possessed; each engaging moment of Tradition is truly played by actual humans rather than crap drum-machines and too many FX pedals. But, like the very best black metal, MALUS VOTUM transcend the physical, the corporeal, the earthly, and turn their gaze to the cosmos and the Beyond: Tradition thus seeks an experience of spiritual/metaphysical means. MALUS VOTUM offer you the keys to their cosmic creations and times - will you unlock this Tradition?