Photo by: Chantik Photography
Official press release:
In just under a decade, Portuguese masked collective, GAEREA has navigated countless darkened shades of metal, post-rock and artistry. Their work is nothing short of a beautiful enigma rooted in musical extremity and utter passion. Loss, their first album with Century Media, is the sound of GAEREA continuing to define and redefine itself, incorporating elements of the band’s post-black metal past with sharpened sonics and haunting melodies. It finds GAEREA emerging from creative chrysalis and bursting into something as engaging as it is unexpected: There’s singing. There are choruses as catchy and passionate as the best rock and metal songs. Yet, through the emotionally charged din, it’s unmistakably GAEREA.
“Hellbound” is an intense and cathartic track, diving deep into themes of guilt, heartbreak, and self-destruction. With searing riffs and visceral vocals, it captures the tension between vulnerability and aggression, love and betrayal. Its official video includes vivid imagery of fire, thorns, and restless ghosts, amplifying the single’s raw emotional weight, making it both haunting and empowering.
GAEREA has built its reputation on a blackened blueprint. Choosing a self-spawned name with no connection to any convenient metal tropes, GAEREA became a vehicle for its members to explore the frayed edges of the human condition without self-imposed limitations – not only on record, but also through their explosive live performance. Their combination of onstage rapture and sonic spirituality invites comparisons to kindred souls like Neurosis or Amen Ra. Swathed entirely in black with their distinct sigil occupying the space where their faces should be, there’s both a totality and anonymity that’s transcendent and binding when the fivesome takes stage; a distinct, hermetic code that connects all aspects of the band from the musical to the spiritual. The anonymous vocalist says:
“It’s not about the individual or seeing our faces. I don’t want people to know me. I want people to connect with the music and the lyrics that I’m singing and apply that to their own lives.”
GAEREA has christened their audience “The Vortex Society”, a collective consciousness that draws inspiration from the band’s unrestrained explorations into the human psyche.
The band’s masked and ritualistic live presence has become not just part of the show, but an integral part of GAEREA that pushes their musical extremity into the philosophical avant-garde. Their uniform was designed to provide a faceless, androgynous shield that allows for them to freely launch into a performance often defined by its own physicality. States the frontman:
“I think the way we perform, the way we play, the way we dance onstage goes hand-in-hand with the way we look. We’re showing more of ourselves, exposing ourselves. We’ve unlocked that freedom where we can do whatever we want. Why would we play into the façade of being a very aggressive band with our feet on the monitors when we can just dance?”
“We’re not about to apologize for simply being who we are,” says the band’s vocalist of the direction taken on GAEREA’s latest endeavor, their first with the same lineup and creative nucleus of members as their previous record Coma. Recorded in early 2025 in Portugal with long-running collaborator Miguel Teroso at Demigod Recordings, Loss is the sound of the masked specters of GAEREA laying their souls bare. Musically and emotionally, they’re opening themselves up and bringing a decade’s worth of musical and personal soul-rending into sharper focus and becoming a genre-of-one in the process.
Loss sees its release March 20, 2026 via Century Media. See below for formats and tracklist. Pre-order/pre-save Loss here.
Loss track listing:
- “Luminary”
- “Submerged”
- “Hellbound”
- “Uncontrolled”
- “Phoenix”
- “Cyclone”
- “LBRNTH”
- “Nomad”
- “Stardust”
Formats:
- Ltd. CD Digipak in O-Card
- Black LP
- Ltd. Pink LP (300x) available from EMP, Supreme Chaos, Portuguese Retailers, UK Indie Stores
- Ltd. Deep Blood Red LP (400x) available in France, from EMP, Evil Greed, Impericon, Supreme Chaos
- Ltd. Side A/B split (Yellow & Red) LP (500x) available from gaerea.com
- Ltd. Transp. Sun Yellow LP (300x) available from GAEREA live
- Trans. Orange Crush LP (US version)
- Ltd. Red Smoke LP (US version) (500x) available from US Indie Retailers
- Ltd. Gold Black Ice LP (US version) (500x) available from IndieMerchstore
- Digital Album
- Digital Album (Dolby Atmos)