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EXCLUSIVE PREMIERE: Shabti Address “Seven Billion Souls” With Spiteful New Track

This is one of those posts that I’m going to remember writing based on the merit of the music alone. Let’s put aside questions of pedigree for now;

5 years ago

This is one of those posts that I’m going to remember writing based on the merit of the music alone. Let’s put aside questions of pedigree for now; Shabti, first and foremost, bring the goods musically. Their upcoming release, Trembling and Shorn is a slab of aggressive, pummeling, unrelenting, blackened death aggression. It’s riffs after scream after blast beat of music that want nothing from you but to get its rage, pain, and derision across. That’s exactly what it does, communicating with brutal precision its various perspectives on life, humankind, the world we live in, and the doom that’s waiting for us all. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, it also features members from the following (deep breath): Falls of Rauros, Obsidian Tongue, Woods of Ypres, Thrawsunblat and Panopticon‘s live ensemble. We mentioned pedigree, yes?

Turning once again from questions of prestige and back to the music, we are proud to present to you today the second single from this furious release, “Seven Billion Souls”. This track exhibits all the musical traits we mentioned above in stark clarity; right out of the gate, it dishes out a pair of overwhelming riffs, backed by vocals dug from that deep, burning place within you that knows no silence. It goes on to iterate on these ideas, swimming in and out of the basic ideas first established, adding deeper, guttural vocals, open chords to accentuate the bleakness of the rest of the riffs, and just keeps going until its time to dive back down into the asphyxiating outro (listen to the bass lines which announce it, and then weave in and out of it, they’re brilliant).

Thing is, the entire goddamn album is like this; there are very few moments of true respite on it. Like “Seven Billion Souls”, the entirety of Trembling and Shorn wastes little time with low-energy moments, preferring instead to keep digging, keep going deeper and heavier. It releases on March 22nd and, if this sounds like your kind of thing (and it should if you’re a fan of black metal to any extent), you can head on over to the Bandcamp link below to pre-order it, right after you wrap your head around this new single.

You can also catch Shabti on tour on the following dates:

3/22/2019 O’Brien’s Pub – Allston, MA w/ Churchburn, Scaphism, Upheaval

3/23/2019 Saint Vitus Bar – Brooklyn, NY w/ Churchburn, Unearthly Trance

3/24/2019 Kung Fu Necktie – Philadelphia, PA w/ Churchburn

3/25/2019 The Depot – Baltimore, MD

3/26/2019 Basement Transmissions – Erie, PA

3/27/2019 Bug Jar – Rochester, NY

3/28/2019 Spark Art Space – Syracuse, NY w/ Fed Ash, Sunken Cheek, God of Gaps, Kalki

3/29/2019 Machines With Magnets – Pawtucket, RI w/ Churchburn, Haxen, Hell Bent, Fed Ash

3/30/2019 Geno’s Rock Club – Portland, ME w/ Evoken, Churchburn, Fed Ash

Eden Kupermintz

Published 5 years ago