Photo by: Alice Siega
Official press release:
Fashioned in high-top sneakers and sleeveless band tees, Northern Italy’s Miscreance proudly reflect the old-school spirit. Upon debuting with Season of Mist in 2022, the band were likened by the press to Death, Sadus, Voivod and other undying greats from the alternate timeline that is the history of extreme metal. But their upcoming second LP isn’t just another blast from the past.
Today, Miscreance are announcing their new album, Reminiscence, with a chilling music video for its lead single “Scalp Ceremony”. The band continue to pound and shred at a blood-thirsty pace, but as they cut through its unfamiliar passages, the song ventures into dark and strange new territory for the genre. Miscreance says about the far-out path they took to Reminiscence:
“Through a collective hallucination, a voyage through time led us to discover a moment in human history that was lost. This album is a testimony of what we have seen, heard, perceived and imagined, told through our own perspective on old-school, thrashy, technical death metal.”
Watch the video for “Scalp Ceremony” below. The video was created by Tulpa Studio in Ferrara, Italy. Reminiscence comes out August 28th on Season of Mist. Pre-order and pre-save here.
Even extreme and obscene artists like Miscreance are well-versed in the classics. With its creepy, cultish, handcam video, underground tape collectors will feel at home watching “Scalp Ceremony”. “We still play old-school tech-thrash”, assures guitarist Andrea Granauro. But while faithful to both Atheist and Dark Angel, Reminiscence isn’t an attempt to recall metal’s glory days. With each sharp and fast turn that the band take during their new single, the genre’s signposts warp until they’re unrecognizable.
“No one ever even sees it comes”, growls drummer Andrea Feltrin with murderous delight. For their final sacrifice on “Scalp Ceremony”, Miscreance bang the long-haired heads of their captive audience with a flurry of bongos.
While recorded in Italy, Miscreance discovered the concept for Reminiscence by sifting through the sands of time. Along with splintering riffs and trippy tempo shifts, the band uncovered a hidden world where jungle-dwelling hunters and digeridoo coexist with strange tongues, telepathic surgeries and a burning celestial corpse. As imagined by Iranian artist Mona Shiraz, the album’s cover art is a modern interpretation of the kind of painting that was all the rage during the Stone Age. Guitarist Tommaso Cappelletti says:
“We are all very happy with how our first album turned out but we wanted to go bigger by tying Reminiscence to a specific concept.”
Bassist Jean-Claude Rossignol explains further:
“What we’ve created is a ‘lost album’, sent from an unknown civilization that’s both futuristic and extremely primitive. Through psychic powers and capabilities that transcend earthly comprehension, these primordial extraterrestrials have achieved total neural unity. Yet innate wickedness still lures inside of them, harboring the need for preys, scalps and lust.”
Reminiscence track listing:
- “Trait d’Union”
- “Vision”
- “Scalp Ceremony”
- “Synaptic Cortex Dissection”
- “Oracle’s Rift”
- “The Moaning Hill”
- “Symbiosis”
- “Zenith of a Dying Sun”
- “Mirage”
