Don’t Miss It: Barshasketh’s Snaking, Stomping Henosis

Hi MetalSucks reader! Here in the last days of 2015, let’s spotlight a few albums that may have been crowded off your radar. Some risk a greater chance of eluding your attention via their arrival during a highly-distracting season — and at the time when we’re looking back at the year’s best, then looking forward to vacation days, shopping, and family snuggling. Others maybe got stuck in line behind anticipated releases by your most trusted bands. Best case scenario, you’ve been jamming all of them for weeks. If not, don’t miss ’em now!

·

It doesn’t jump out at a listener. In fact, a few spins of Barshasketh’s Ophidian Henosis are required before you start to feel certain of “it.” You’re not super sure of your own faculties about anything in your life, let alone obscure art, so you wave away the thought of “it.” But then your confidence grows to identify it, this album’s “secret weapon.” Though not very controversial, it’s subtle so you wonder if you’re projecting or thinking wishfully. But wait, you’ve never wished for it nor do you want bands to express your desires (just their own). So your ears must not be lying: This is blackened death metal that fleetingly but regularly acts like… Gojira.

To some, that makes Barshasketh seem as appealing as a second-wave black metal project by the Trivium guy. To everyone else, it’s flashes of daring that add greatly to an already great album. It marks a moribund movement with the same today-ness that netted hails for Watain and Bathory. It’s a starving tiger shark that takes cool-down laps and floats lazily on his back en route to shredding your nuts. Crank it up!!

Barshasketh’s Ophidian Henosis came out in July via Blut & Eisen and W.T.C. Get it here and here. Get their awesome split with Void Ritual here.